| Len's uncle
Judah starts Hebrew school
I
must have gotten a little bit older—I must have been very, very young
at that time, about four years old, and I was supposed to start Hebrew
school. We used to call it “Cheder.” “Geyen in cheder” meant “Going to school”
Cheder really means a room. Why do we call it a “school room?” Because the teachers
that taught Hebrew had one room of their house that was just for the school
room. They were private teachers. I recall my mother, instead of saying,
“Go to the Rebbe's room,” she would say “Gey in Cheder,” which meant school.
To this day when they refer to the school, the old type school they call
it “cheder.”
So
I remember my feter [uncle] Azriel, my father's brother came, and he unwrapped
a tallit, that's a big prayer shawl, the Jewish people wear when they
pray. He picked me up, and he wrapped the tallit around me, and he took
me into his arms, and he carried me to cheder. He brought me in to the
room of the rebbe who was the Hebrew teacher, and he put me in a chair.
I sat down, and the rebbe was sitting in another chair.
The pupils had a book [some words inaudible] on a cardboard, a piece of paper, a long card on which the Hebrew alphabet was written. The rabbi said to me, “Say ‘aleph.’ Say ‘bays.’ Say ‘gimel.’ And, you see, this looks like a line with a line underneath—we say that ‘aw’ and we call it ‘kametz.’ Here is an aleph and you put a kametz under it, and you say ‘kametz aleph aw.’ And this is a bays. You say ‘kametz bays baw.’” And I said, “Aw,” and I said, “baw.”
And soon candy was falling from above; I saw candy on the table. I didn’t know that my feter Azriel was standing in the back there and throwing candy way over my head. My uncle said to me, “Vais mein kind...” He said, “Do you know, my child, where this candy comes from?” I said, “No, I don’t.” He said, “That’s an angel looking at you kindly, loving you so much, because you’re such a wonderful boy, because you understand so much, and because you can read it.” [cries].
Then he took some honey, which was brought in by the rebbe’s wife, and was placed on the table with a spoon. He put it on the lips of my mouth. He quoted a sentence, “And Your words came into my mouth, and they were as sweet as honey.” This was the beginning of my Jewish education.
I didn’t spend many years in this rebbe’s room, I think about a year and a half, maybe. He was a very fine person, and a very learned man. There were two outstanding teachers in my hometown. This one was one of them, but after having spent a year and a half in his school, I passed on to the school of my great rabbi Rabbi Baurch Mordecai, a very fine, kind person. My mother wanted me to attend his school, but she didn’t dare to go up to him, and ask him to accept me, because he had only about four, five, or six pupils at the most. Some teachers had as many as 25 and 30. He took very few.
Some wealthy people paid him a lot of money in those days. Fifty rubles—Russian dollars a semester. That was a lot of money. A semester was a half a year. That was a lot of money. He was getting as much as 80 and 100. My rebbe was a pretty well-to-do man. I wouldn’t call him a very rich man, but a well-to-do man. He had three stores. He himself never attended to the business. His wife and children did. But he derived his pleasure from teaching. [words inaudible] devotion and kindness. I became a pupil of Rabbi Baurch Mordecai.
I studied with him for a number of years, until I was about 11 and a half, when he said—told my mother and said, “It’s time for him to go to the Yeshiva.”
I have to go back a little. I forgot to mention that — as I said before my mother didn’t get to go to him to accept me, but he came over to our house. He said to my mother, “You know, I would like to have your son in my school.” He knew—he must have heard it or talked to someone about it. He said, “They mentioned that you wanted to come up to see me.”
So he came and asked my mother to send me to his room. This is how he became my teacher.
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