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The second arrested “gvir” was Yakov Levi, known as “The American”. This “American” had an interesting background. As a young man from a small shtetl near Bialystok, he had fled to England in the 1950s and from there to Canada, where he was a “rag-peddler” (a buyer of rags).
Once, when he arrived at the factory where he sold his wares, he realized that soft down wool could be made from washed rags and pieces of cloth that had fallen from the tailor's table and were fed into a ripping machine. The material could be spun and used to weave cheap fabric for winter coats.
This type of “wool” was called “shody”. The Canadian rag trader Levi knew that the Jewish textile manufacturers in Bialystok would be interested in this type of raw material. (I emphasize the word “Jewish” because the German manufacturers such as Moes, Hasbach, Henrichs,
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Richter and Komichov produced expensive fabrics from pure wool).
So he moved to Bialystok with his whole family, consisting of his wife, three sons and two daughters, who all had English names - Harry, Frank, John, Sarah and Lena. There he opened a “shody” factory and after a few years he became a rich man.
Actually, it was not so easy for him to return to Bialystok because he “already was a Canadian (English) citizen”[1]. But since he introduced a new industry to the city, the tsarist government allowed him to become a “Russian” again.
So what was the crime for which the rich shody factory owner was imprisoned? As I learned from my father, who knew him well and often visited him in his office, the crime of the “shody” king was the following:
He had a conflict with a small merchant named “Motke” (I can't remember his last name). It seems that the two didn't get along. My father told me that once Motke got on the “gvir's” nerves so much that he grabbed Motke by the hand and threw him out of the store. But the pressure of Yakov Levi's strong hand made the little ragpicker's hand swell up so much that he sued the important “gvir” for a large sum of money.
However, the rich “shody” manufacturer categorically refused to give him a single kopeck. Levi consulted Moyshe Rubn to find a solution to the problem. Moyshe Rubn, or “Moyshe Ruve” as he was called in the Pyaskes, was a stocky, middle-aged Jew with a red face and a red, close-cropped beard, a real “royter idl”[2]. He was the Bialystoker “tshong-ramer”[3], but he had another “business” as well:
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He was also the intermediary between the thieves and the people who were robbed. He knew all the thieves in the city and where they went to steal. When a major theft occurred, one knew where to turn - to Moyshe Ruve...
This Moyshe Ruve advised the “gvir”, Yakov Levi, to slander the plaintiff, Motke, as a member of a gang of thieves, in order to get rid of him once and for all. A “learned” person from the criminal underworld named Yoske Shvarts appeared and wrote the “donos” (the denunciation).
But the slander was immediately exposed, and the investigator, Pyotr Povlov (who was called Peter Fayvl), ordered the arrest of the rich Yakov Levi. The latter had to spend four weeks in Bialystok prison, among all kinds of criminals.
The arrest of the American shook the whole city. People asked, “How could a Jew like Yakov Levi get involved in such a thing? - Such a dignified personality with a beautiful black and gray beard - a great benefactor, a man so pious that he kisses the mezuzot[4], a graduate of the Adath Yeshurun school and private seminaries, and a constant reader of the Hebrew newspaper HaTsefirah (a rarity among Bialystoker factory owners and large merchants)! How could such a Jew commit such a heinous crime and try to discredit a poor Jew whom he had almost crippled?
The only answer outsiders could give was: the rich, powerful man gets away with everything because he hopes his money will protect him. And this was indeed the case. The “Yakov Levi Affair” was played down. And so the Russian proverb “rub govorit, rub maltshit”[5] came true. Or in Hebrew: [6]“כסף וזהב מטה ממזרים”.
These two rich Jews – Leon Markus and Yakov Levi –
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tainted the good name of Bialystok Jewry for all eternity with their rotten crimes.
Translator's footnotes:
But these two rich and mighty Jewish gentlemen were not the only ones who disgraced Bialystok Jewry. On the Pyaskes and on Suraska Street there was a tall Jew who went by the name of “The Linker Khalfn”.
This guy knew how to use various strange tricks and barter deals to rob poor peasants of the few hard-earned rubles they needed to buy the things they needed at home.
Once, along with some boys from the Vishonker's cheder, I had the opportunity to see the scoundrel at work on Suraska Street. We shouted: “This is 'khilel-hashem'! A 'khilel-hashem'!”[1]
But the bad guy didn't hear us. (Needless to say, the police got a nice cut of his “legitimate earnings”).
The same lousy guy was seen going to prayers on Shabbat. In his long black caftan, with a soft black fedora (ma'aseh rav)[2], with his red face and a little gray beard, he looked haughty, as if to say:
“I'm going to ruin you, and you can't touch me!”
However, he did not dare to enter the large shul. He prayed in a small minyen [prayer quorum] somewhere on Rofisher Lane.[3]
Translator's footnotes:
Finally, in 1893, I entered the school of Yofe, where I spent five years. In this school I learned Russian, grammar, arithmetic
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(up to algebra), geography, Ilovayski's History of Russia, natural sciences such as physics and chemistry, astronomy, “tshistopisanye” (calligraphy), singing in the school choir, which was conducted by the famous Bialystok musician Yakov Berman, who had taught the celebrated opera singer Roza Raiza (Reytske Burshteyn of the Pyaskes)[1]. We also learned “Khumesh” (the Bible in Russian).
Of course, we students needed this subject, which was called “predmet,” as much as “a hole in the head,” because everyone in the class had completed the cheder, as had I, even before we entered the state school.
But as we found out later, it was an order “from above” that we had to learn the Bible in Russian. The order came from the “Ministry of Education” and was part of the “program” of Russification.
Together with his “chief minister”, the sadly famous anti-Semite Pobedonostsev[2] - may his name be blotted out - Tsar Alexander the Third tried to impose the Russian language on all non-Russian Orthodox peoples in Old Russia.
In those years it was rumored that Gemore teachers would eventually be forced to study the Talmud in Russian with their students - if not, they would no longer be allowed to be teachers!
Translator's footnotes:
My teachers at Yofe's school were: Mosei Bogdanovitsh Zhmudski, a tall man with glasses, a thick dark brown beard and a serious look; Klyatshko, a tall clean-shaven young man in his thirties, with beautiful big black eyes; Yakov Solomonavitsh Pruski, with dreamy black eyes, frizzy hair; and also the tall gentleman Ilya Davidovitsh Yofe, a man in his late forties, with big round gray eyes behind his “golden” glasses, with a big belly and a round blond beard.
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All my teachers were graduates of the Vilnius Institute, the “Utshityelski Institute,” a public educational institution that, in the time of the tsars, prepared teachers specifically for Jewish schools, which were paid for by the government.
All these teachers who taught us were, as they said, “Rusakes,” strict patriots of the Russian language. We never heard a word of Yiddish from them.
We students were afraid to speak Yiddish in their presence...
One of these teachers, or Russifiers, in fact the initiator himself, Ilya Davidovitsh Yofe, went so far with his “Russification” that he often conducted surveys in the classes to find out how many of the students' fathers spoke Russian with them at home. Before the survey, he would give us a “lesson” and explain why the Jews were being persecuted.
“The Jew,” he said, “suffers because of his language.” (It was obvious to us that he did not dare to use the offensive term “zhargon” [slang].) He continued, “And he suffers because he wears an unkempt beard.”...
None of us students raised our hands to answer his question. Only one, a blond boy, stood up and said:
“If my father hears me speaking Yiddish with my brother, we'll both get slapped!”
“Khorosho!” Yofe rejoiced, “Well done, that's the way to do it!” And he urged the students' parents to follow the “good example.
Personally, I had a couple of run-ins with Yofe. The first time it happened in the “biblyeyski urok”,
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the Bible lesson, when we were learning the first part of the Torah, the verse from Khumesh [1]“נעשה אדם בצלמנו”. He translated it into Russian as follows: “sotvorim tshelovyeka po abrozu podobyu nashemu” [Let us make man in our own likeness].
I raised my hand and asked, “Ilya Davidovitsh, does God really look like a man?”
“Yedinitsu yemu” [a 1 for him], he said angrily, issued me a “1” [the worst grade] in the class register, and warned me never to ask such questions again in the future, “Vperyod takikh voprosov nye predlagai!”
This strict action of my teacher annoyed me a lot, because the “1” lowered my average grade.
Translator's footnote:
Six months later, I had a second run-in with my “educator” Yofe, when he tried to find out how many of his students put on tefilin every day.
The students were in no hurry to answer his “question” because in the courtyard for the school classes, the “bar-mitsve-bokherim.”
[13-year-old boys] had discussed that the one who puts on tefilin is a “yold” [fool]. Now, of course, those who put on tefilin did not want to be labeled with such a title, which is not exactly a compliment. But those who did not put on tefilin were afraid of the “rabbi”...
However, there was a black-eyed “yat”[1] in the class who told Yofe that the student sitting on the other bench to his left was putting on tefilin for Shabbat (“po subotam”)...[2]
The whole class immediately burst out laughing...
The teacher did his best to hold back his laughter, but it didn't help, he laughed too...
A few minutes later, he became
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very serious and shouted: “Shut up, shut up!”
But as soon as the laughter died down, I started laughing again. I imagined the image of a young boy coming into shul or his minyan on Shabbat with his tefilin bag, and starting to unravel the black leather straps with the “shel rosh”[3], causing a ruckus in the prayer house, and everyone there ending up laughing at the boy. ....
Yofe, however, was immediately angry with me. “Look, look,” he grumbled, “he's found something to joke about again ('vish nashol nad tshem nasmyekhatsa')!”
And I was afraid that he would write me another “1”. But - he didn't...
Some time later we learned that Yofe no longer did such “question campaigns”...
Translator's footnotes:
In 1898, I left Yofe's school and also took off my student uniform, which consisted of a black suit, a belt wrapped around my shirt, and a cap with a leather peak, and became a “civilian” again.
The reason I left school without graduating was because I didn't pass the exam to enter the last class and I was ashamed to sit in the same class for another year.
My father didn't object to my decision: He thought I already knew enough Russian; I could already read a newspaper and a book, write a letter, understand a bill and short legal papers. He liked the fact that I could calculate percentages. He started thinking about a kind of work for me. But what profession
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could a fifteen-year-old boy with only an elementary school education think of? The answer was: accounting.
However, to be an accountant in Bialystok you had to know German, because the books were kept in German. So my father hired a German teacher for me, “Mr. Beder,” a Jew in his forties, tall, with a red face and a short brown beard. I was not unfamiliar with the German language because, as I have already mentioned, I had spoken to the German non-Jewish “rascals” in our neighborhood in their language since childhood. However, when I started to learn German, I realized that there is a big difference between “speaking” and “being able to read and write”...
For two years the “Beder” taught me the language of Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Moses Mendelsohn and other great Germans. He took me through all of Schiller's famous poems, as well as a textbook with many beautiful stories. In the most beautiful of them, however, the accursed German militarism was very much emphasized. The “soldier” was praised to the skies in these stories...
He was usually idolized!
After two years, Mr. Beder began to teach me bookkeeping, according to a certain textbook known as “Oto Zyedes” [Otto Siedes?]. He taught me very well to understand the theory [and specialized terminology] of “debit and credit”, of “an” and “per”, to prepare a “trial balance” every month and a “general balance” every year, as well as other basic accounting rules.
My teacher was known and respected in the town as a good teacher. However, I had a confrontation with him as well as with Yofe. I think it was in the summer of 1900. At that time a bitter and prolonged strike of the girls in Yanovski's
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cigarette factory had begun. In the presence of my father, he [my teacher] once said: “Why do the girls have to go on strike? They're going to get married soon anyway, so what's the point?”
And I immediately remarked:
“And if they are going to get married, who are they going to marry - Mordekhay Gordon's son, for instance? They will have to marry a poor laborer, and both will have to fight bitterly for their existence!” (Mordechai Gordon was the most powerful and richest man in the city at that time.)
The two of them, my father and my teacher, looked at each other and smiled...
In the last years of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, the city fell on hard times. In the fall of 1899, the first major general strike of all textile workers - weavers, winders, spinners, dyers and finishers - took place.
Huge meetings were held in an open square near the “stav” [artificial pond] opposite Berl Polyak's factory.
It was said that 20 to 22 thousand workers took part in such a mass meeting - Jews, Christians, men and women. The strikers' demands were as usual: higher wages and shorter working hours. (At that time, they worked twelve hours a day for a wage of five to seven dollars a week).
Small textile entrepreneurs on the Pyaskes and small factory owners argued at the time that the inspections introduced by the Russian government in the early 1890s had “spoiled” the workers. This was not true.
The inspection had nothing to do with wages or
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the number of hours worked. Through my personal contacts with the inspectors from Łódź and Bialystok, I had learned that they had a different function than helping to fight for better working conditions for the terribly exploited masses.
The inspectors, trained engineering technicians, used to inspect the machines and check that they were in good working order to prevent breakdowns and accidents.
If a worker had to wait for materials, the factory owner was not allowed to assign him to another job in the same factory.
The inspectors ordered the employers to build separate toilets for men and women and to provide them with statistics on the production of the factory in question, as well as the number of foreigners working in the factory (in those years, the foreigners employed in the textile industry were Germans and Austrians).
But these officials of the tsarist regime also allowed workers to be punished by deducting half an hour from their wages if they arrived at the factory two minutes late. They also allowed penalties for workers who sat on the toilet for more than ten minutes - or for other trivialities.
As I said, the Tsar's inspection machinery did absolutely nothing to help the oppressed, hard-working masses improve their economic situation. On the contrary, the possibility of punishing workers (which Lenin fought against with all his might for many years before the October Revolution) actually helped to oppress the workers.
In the early years of the twentieth century, in the woods near the
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village of Slabode, not far from my street, there were already skhodkes [meetings] of workers, where speakers addressed the assembled workers and discussed their painful problems. People who were not affected, who were not workers, were not allowed to listen to the speeches and discussions. A guard stood around the “skhodkes” and made sure that no strangers approached. One of the guards, a well-known Polish weaver, once told me in no uncertain terms that the son of a factory owner was not allowed to attend such a meeting and ordered me to leave immediately.
Needless to say, I obeyed...
Police shootings of workers gathered in the woods and on the outskirts of the city were so frequent that they were considered normal events that few people noticed.
I came to know about a bloody clash between the workers and the police by a strange coincidence: once, when I was walking on Vashlikover Street on a cold early morning, I met my friend from the cheders and Yofe's school, Simkhe Tsfat, a clerk, accompanied by a worker.
When I asked him why he was in such a hurry, he whispered in my ear, “We are visiting doctors and instructing them to treat the wounded from the night shooting. We tell them not to give the police the names and addresses of the wounded workers they are treating. And if they don't obey us, they will soon regret it”...
Almost every day we heard about strikes and resistance. In the courtyard of the shul, at the beginning of Suraska Street, there were dense crowds of workers every evening - so dense, in fact, that it was impossible to squeeze through and move on...
From the unorganized gatherings in this courtyard of the shul, cries could be heard that the “balebatim” [factory owners]
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were exploiting them in an inhumane way. And with raised sticks they threatened to settle accounts with them soon.
In the years of strikes with work stoppages and meetings, the revolutionary workers distributed anti-tsarist and anti-capitalist proclamations. Small factory owners and small textile businessmen who opened the shutters early in the morning found such leaflets in the cracks and crevices. One of these leaflets called on the masses to celebrate May Day. (My father used to tear up such leaflets and wouldn't let me read them. He also tore up a book on the history of the French Revolution).
The first and public appearance of the revolutionary workers and intelligentsia against the Tsar took place in the empty squares of the burned houses, on Pyaskes and Suraska Street, where boys “danced a corridor” and sang: “Daloy samodarzhavye!” “Daloy samodyerzhavets merzavets!”[1]
Translator's footnote:
One of the greatest manifestations of the unity of the Bialystok workers in the struggle against tsarism and capitalism was the huge funeral procession for the “Bershter”[1], who had also been an active Bundist and agitator. The funeral took place on a cold, wintry afternoon in 1902 or 1903. The procession made its way uphill from the “Old Jewish Cemetery - Sreet” to Surasker Street. The mourners, men and women, marched quietly and calmly in closed rows, six in a row, across the trampled white snow of Gumienna, Yurovitser [Jurowiecka] and Vashlikover Streets to Bagnowka, the site of the new and third Jewish cemetery.
This was the second
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largest funeral in the city. It was estimated at the time that at least four to five thousand people took part in the funeral march. An elderly Jew standing next to me on Suraska Street told me that he had not seen such a large funeral procession since the funeral of the Bialystoker rabbi, Rabbi Lipele, twenty years ago.
Khone, the mortician, complained that he had not been allowed to see the body. [His friends] had buried their Bundist leader themselves and without prayers. One of the speakers at the grave claimed that the revolutionary “Bershter” had not died, but that the “elektrye” [electricity] had gone out of him. From then on, cynics labeled every revolutionary a “Lektri”.
The second Jewish workers' demonstration that I happened to see was on the evening of Tishebov in 1902 or 1903. It was a hot evening. The sun was already setting. Jews, exhausted from fasting, slowly dragged themselves home from the bote-midroshim [houses of study] and the minyonim (prayer quorums] to have a bite to eat.
As I stood on the “Long Pyaskes”, next to my house, I saw a large, dense mass of people, young men and women, coming from the direction of Slabode. They were marching in closed ranks toward Surasker Street, led by a young blond girl holding an umbrella. Near the house of Elye Tsitron [Citron], the march suddenly stopped. The marchers in the rear did not know or understand the reason for the stop.
But those at the front knew very well: the leader's topknot had come undone, so she stopped, took the red handle of the umbrella in her mouth, and quickly rearranged her undone hair with both hands. Then the march began again.
When the people came to Zaviker's yard, the “okalodotshnik”[2], Khodorovski, a tall goy with a short dark brown beard and evil black eyes,
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appeared out of nowhere and began to shout:
“Razkhodis!” Then the people began to disperse.
But before the whole crowd had gone, a small, skillful boy hit the “kolodotshnik” with half a brick, causing his face to bleed. Holding a small cloth in his hand to stop the bleeding, he shouted in his bass voice:
“Svolotshi! Svolotshi!”[3] and waved his saber...
Outsiders who watched the march admired the courage and fearlessness of the Jewish girl who walked at the head of a workers' demonstration, unafraid of the brutal police and their hidden spies. This is one of the brightest chapters in the history of the Jewish labor and revolutionary movement in Bialystok at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Translator's footnotes:
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On this street the foundation for the famous textile industry were laid, and here the wealthiest and most prominent citizens had their properties. Source: http://wirtualnie.lomza.pl/wirtualnie/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Ksi%C4%99ga-album-pami%C4%99ci-gminy-%C5%BCydowskiej-w-Bia%C5%82ymstoku-cz%C4%99%C5%9B%C4%87-1.pdf |
On a gloomy, cold autumn evening in 1904, I had the opportunity to see another strange activity of the oppressed and exploited workers on Tiktin Street, a street of rich shops. Almost along the entire length of the street, about a hundred poorly dressed young men with stern faces were marching in pairs along the sidewalk (on the right side) of the street, pushing passers-by along the side and into the middle of the street...
And the leader of this relatively small demonstration was, to my great surprise, none other than Shmerke, Yakov Levi's youngest son, born in Bialystok. He was a lad of twenty, of medium height, with lively dark-browed eyes in a vital face, and dressed in poor
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clothes. Yes, it was indeed a big surprise, because I couldn't imagine that a son of such a big “gvir” as Yakov Levi, the biggest “shody” factory owner in the city, would lead a workers' demonstration!
In fact, he kept his head down a bit, but I recognized him immediately, because I had seen him a few times in his father's factory and also in his office on Mazer's Street.
I didn't know where Shmerke was leading the march. I didn't follow him; I was just afraid...
Only a few days later, when I told some of my close friends about the extraordinary demonstration, they told me that the anarchists had planned to raid Muravyov's large and rich grocery store, located on the corner of Vashlikover Street opposite Vilbushevitsh's pharmacy.
And Shmerke, I was told, was the leader of the “avant-garde”. However, the planned raid, or as it was called at the time, “ekspropryatsye” [expropriation], was not carried out because such a daring action required a large mass of people, and only a small number of fighters came.
On the street and on the Pyaskes, university students who had come from other cities and were wearing ordinary student uniforms were particularly eye-catching. (They consisted of blue, knee-length “tolstovkes”, a kind of shirts, worn under a jacket with a tasseled, braided belt. The “shirts” were called “tolstovkes” because the great Tolstoy had worn such a “shirt.”)
Among the uniformed, bearded and bespectacled “intelligentsia” there were also a large number of scholars in “civilian” clothes. They could be seen on “my” road, on the way to Slabode, the first village one came to.
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It was two vyorst [about 2 kilometers] from the town.
Near this village there were large clearings in the forest where trees had been cut down, and large workers' meetings were held there.
The aforementioned revolutionary “intelligentsia” went to these proletarian meetings and made speeches. Their faces showed the seriousness and determination to carry out their mission, regardless of the risk of being arrested or killed in a clash with the police or the “spikes” (as the Tsar's spies and provocateurs were called).
I didn't follow them. I was afraid...even though I had great respect for these great idealists. Highly educated young lads, most of them from wealthy families, were sacrificing themselves for the poorest of the poor, the robbed and oppressed masses, helping them to fight for a better and freer life! Later I learned that many of these noble and learned young lads I mentioned joined the common workers, went to work in the factories, and there, in front of the workers, proclaimed their ideals of freedom.
Once my father came in from the street and told me that he had just heard that a worker in a large leather factory had been arrested for agitating against the Tsar and the factory owner. Later it turned out that the arrested man was a student at the law faculty and had only one year left to finish his studies and become a “prisyazhni poverni,” a lawyer who could have practiced in the highest courts of the land.
Neither my father nor I had ever heard of the “narodovoltses” - the sons and daughters of rich, highly educated families who left their universities and comfortable homes to mingle with the “strangers”, the poor peasants in the village
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and the workers in the factories, to teach them to read and write, but also to teach them how to fight against the tsarist regime and capitalism - for a free and better world. The arrested tanner-lawyer was one of these “narodovoltses”.
In short, the spirit of revolution hovered over the Pyaskes, over Khanayke's Suraska Street, and in the small side streets - in the area that was then densely populated by Jewish and non-Jewish proletarians. There also lived a small number of so-called “balebatish” Jews, small factory owners, owners of grocery stores, taverns, haberdasheries, as well as shopkeepers, overseers, bookkeepers, and other “dependent people”, as Avrom Reyzen used to call them.
Three great teachers of Jewish scholarship lived there:
Reb Shmuel Fuks, the father of Abraham Fuks, the former editor of the Hebrew weekly “HaShavua”, which was published in Vienna, Austria; also Motye ben HaRav and Reb Akiva (it was said of R' Akiva that he knew the “Shas”[1] so well that he could outclass the greatest rabbis).
Through the open doors and windows of the small factories and private homes, Jewish working girls could be heard singing Dovid Edelstadt's songs, such as “S'dreyen zikh reder, s'klapn di mashinen,”[2] “Mir vern gehast un getribn,”[3] and other Jewish revolutionary songs. Polish working girls sang “Tshervoni shtandard”[4], [and] in Russian, “Vozlye ryetshki, vozlye mosta, vozlye ryetshki vozlye mosta travka rosla”[5].
These songs were so popular that even [pious] Jewish women wearing a “sheytl” [wig] sang them...
And on Shabbat evening, when you walked through the Pyaskes coming from the forest and Słoboda, working-class girls and boys sang “Vikhri
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vrozhdyebnye veyut nad nami tyomnye sili nas tlobno gnyedut“[6].
They also sang Gorky's “Solntse vskhodit i zakhodit a v. tyurmye monyey tyemno” [The sun rises and sets, and in my prison it's dark], Nekrasov's “Ukazhi mnye abityel, ya takovo ugla nye vidal”[7]and other freedom songs in three languages. “Balebatish” girls also sang along.
In short, in 1902, 1903 and 1904 the “second half” of Bialystok was dominated by the spirit of revolution (the “first half” consisted of the aristocratic streets, such as Novalipe, Mazer's Street, “Nayvelt” [New World], Gumyener [Gumienna], Yurovtser [Jurowiecka], Vashlikover, “Nay-shtot” [New Town], Daytshe [German] Street, and the small, narrow alleys around the rich streets).
Translator's footnotes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaVCsIAyp4s Return
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arQJh12A4MU Return
But in addition to the songs we heard, the “Long Pyaskes” also featured discussions and debates between members of different political persuasions, especially between Bundists and Zionists (“tsiunim” as they called themselves at the time). These discussions usually took place on Shabbat in the summer, after the meal, or rather after eating tsholent [Shabbat stew] and kugl [pudding].
From the houses deep in the courtyards, boys and girls would come out into the street to talk “politics” with acquaintances.
The revolutionary spirit had even taken hold of the coachmen and carters, who used to curse each other with such phrases as “May a revolution hit you in the stomach” or “May a strike hit you in the gut!”.
One such Shabbat afternoon I found myself listening to a debate between a worker, a Bundist, and a “balebatish” fellow, a Zionist student. The latter, a handsome young man, was trying to persuade his interlocutor, a Bundist and carpenter-a tall fellow with reddish-blond hair
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that a separate country in Palestine, or a territory somewhere else, would certainly solve the painful Jewish problem and, consequently, the problem of the workers' situation.
The Bundist was in complete disagreement with his interlocutor.
“What good is a country of my own,” he asked, “what difference does it make whether I am exploited by a Jewish capitalist in Bialystok or in Jerusalem? How do you know that I won't have to work hard and bitterly for a pittance in a 'country of my own' - just like here?”
And in presenting his arguments, the “Geler Stolyer” [red-blond carpenter], as he was called in the street, reminded his Zionist opponent of Karl Marx's immortal declaration that “the worker has no fatherland”[1]; that thousands of people in Moscow had to sleep outside in the cold, and that thousands of people in America had to sleep under the bridges, in their “own country”.
The Zionist dreamer agreed with him that the worker suffers in all countries. “But”, he argued, “ after all, it is written: 'כי ציון במשפט תפדה', Zion will be redeemed by righteousness[2], that is, righteousness will reign in “Eretz Yisroel” [the Land of Israel], and it will not be as in the days of Jesse and Jeremiah.”
“Well, well, well!” said the carpenter impatiently. “Hardly any of what is written there, and hardly any of what is said there [will happen]. Who is forced to believe all that is written and said there? Only fools believe in all these scribblings and sayings. And he quoted [to his opponent] a Tanakh saying from the holy books, in which it is said:
“פתי יאמין לכל דבר”- a fool believes in everything.
Unfortunately, the young Zionist enthusiast found himself at a great disadvantage. He did not know what to say to his opponent. However, he was surprised to hear
[Page 59]
that a simple worker was not unfamiliar with the “black dots”...[3]
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My Childhood Years in the Pyaskes
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