August 19, 2025 • 17 mins
In the late 19th century, being a Jew in Russia came with its own set of challenges and dangers. Facing persecution for their faith, many sought solace in their rich cultural traditions. When Mary Antins father decided to abandon these customs, he discovered that he no longer belonged in Russia. Thus, he emigrated to America with his family. While life presented its own struggles, Mary recalls her childhood in Boston with an almost idyllic sense of wonder. A bright and resilient young girl, she finds beauty in adversity and shares her inspiring journey through her captivating autobiography. Join Bridget as she brings Marys story to life, allowing you to experience her trials and triumphs firsthand. (Summary by Stav Nisser)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter twelve of The Promised Land. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by bridget Gage, The Promised
Land by Mary Anton, Chapter twelve Miracles. It was not
always in admiration that the finger was pointed at me.
One day I found myself the center of an excited
group in the middle of the schoolyard, with a dozen
(00:21):
girls interrupting each other to express their disapproval of me,
For I had coolly told them, in answer to a question,
that I did not believe in God. How had I
arrived at such a conviction? How had I come from
prayer and fasting and psalm singing to extreme impiety, alas
my backsliding had cost me no traval of spirit, always
(00:43):
weak in my faith, playing at sanctity as I played
at soldiers, just as I was in the mood or not.
I had neglected my books of devotion and given myself
up to profane literature at the first opportunity in Vitebsk,
and I never took up my prayer book again. On
my return to Polait, America loomed so near that my
imagination was fully occupied, and I did not revive the
(01:06):
secret experiments with which I used to test the nature
and intention of deity. It was more to me that
I was going to America than that I might not
be going to Heaven. And when we joined my father
and I saw that he did not wear the sacred
fringes and did not put on the flactories and pray,
I was neither surprised nor shocked. Remembering the Sabbath night
(01:26):
when he had with his own hand turned out the lamp.
When I saw him go out to work on Sabbath,
exactly as on a week day, I understood why God
had not annihilated me with his lightnings that time when
I purposely carried something in my pocket on Sabbath, there
was no God and there was no sin. And I
ran out to play, pleased to find that I was
free like other little girls in the street, instead of
(01:49):
being hemmed about with prohibitions and obligations at every step.
And yet, if the golden truth of Judaism had not
been handed me in the motley rags of formalism, I
might not I have been so ready to put away
my religion. It was Rachel Goldstein who provoked my avowal
of atheism. She asked if I wasn't going to stay
out of school during Passover? And I said, no, wasn't
(02:12):
I a Jew? She wanted to know, No, I wasn't.
I was a free thinker? What was that? I didn't
believe in God? Rachel was horrified why Kitty Maloney believed
in God and Kitty was only a Catholic. She appealed
to Kitty, Kitty Maloney, come over here, don't you believe
in God? There? Now? Mary Anton? Mary Anton says she
(02:36):
doesn't believe in God. Rachel Goldstein's horror is duplicated. Kitty Maloney,
who used to mock Rachel's Jewish accent, instantly becomes her
valuable ally and proceeds to annihilate me by plying me
with crucial questions. You don't believe in God? Then who
made you? Mary Anton? Nature made me? Nature made you?
(02:57):
What's that? It's everything? It's the trees. No, it's what
makes the trees grow. That's what it is. But God
made the trees, Mary Anton from Rachel and Kitty in chorus, Maggie,
O'Reilly listen to Mary Anton. She says there isn't any God.
She says the trees made her. Rachel and Kitty and Maggie,
(03:18):
Sadie and Annie and Becky made a circle around me
and pressed me with questions, and mocked me, and threatened
me with hell flames and utter extinction. I held my
ground against them, all obstinately enough, though my argument was
exceedingly lame. I glibly repeated phrases I had heard my
father use, but I had no real understanding of his
(03:38):
atheistic doctrines. I had been surprised into this dispute. I
had no spontaneous interest in the subject. My mind was
occupied with other things. But as the number of my
opponents grew and I saw how unanimously they condemned me,
my indifference turned into a heat of indignation. The actual
point to issue was as little as ever to me,
(03:59):
but I perceived that a crowd of free Americans were
disputing the right of a fellow citizen to have any
kind of God she chose. I knew from my father's
teaching that this persecution was contrary to the Constitution of
the United States, and I held my ground as befitted
the defender of a cause. George Washington would not have
treated me as Rachel Goldstein and Kitty Maloney were doing.
(04:21):
This is a free country, I reminded them in the
middle of the argument. The excitement in the yard amounted
to a toy riot. When the squowbell rang and the
children began to file in, I stood out there as
long as any of my enemies remained, although it was
my habit to go to my room very promptly, And
as the foes of American liberty crowded and pushed in
(04:41):
the line, whispering to those who had not heard that
a heretic had been discovered in their mist the teacher
who kept the line in the corridor was obliged to
scold and pull the noisy ones into order, and Sadie
Kohen told her in tones of awe what the commotion
was about. Miss Bland waited till the children had filed
before she asked me, in a tone encouraging confidence, to
(05:04):
give my version of the story. This I did huskily
but fearlessly, and the teacher, who was a woman of tact,
did not smile or commit herself in any way. She
was sorry that the children had been rude to me,
but she thought they would not trouble me any more
if I let the subject drop. She made me understand
somewhat as Miss Dillingham had done on the occasion of
(05:25):
my whispering during prayer that it was proper American conduct
to avoid religious arguments on school territory. I felt honored
by this private initiation into the doctrine of the separation
of church and state, and I went to my seat
with a good deal of dignity. My alarm about the
safety of the constitution alate by the teacher's calmness. This
(05:46):
is not so strictly the story of the second generation
that I may not properly give a brief account of
how it fared with my mother when my father undertook
to purge his house of superstition. The process of her emancipation,
it is true, was not obvious to me at the time.
But what I observed of her outward conduct has been
interpreted by my subsequent experience, so that to day I
(06:08):
understand how it happens that all the year round my
mother keeps the same day of rest as her gentile neighbors.
But when the ramshorn blows on the day of Atonement,
calling upon Israel to cleanse its heart from sin and
draw nearer to the God of its fathers, her soul
was stirred as of old, and she needs must join
in the ancient service. It means I have come to
(06:28):
know that she has dropped the husk and retained the
kernel of Judaism. But years were required for this process
of instinctive selection. My father, in his ambition to make
Americans of us, was rather headlong and strenuous in his methods.
To my mother, on the eve of departure for the
New World, he wrote boldly that progressive Jews in America
(06:49):
did not spend their days in praying, and he urged
her to leave her wig in Polotzk as a first
step of progress. My mother, like the majority of women
in the pale, had all her life life taken her
religion on authority. So she was only fulfilling her duty
to her husband when she took his hint and set
out upon her journey in her own hair. Not that
it was done without reluctance. The Jewish faith in her
(07:12):
was deeply rooted, as in the best of Jews it
always is. The law of the Fathers was binding to her,
and the outward symbols of obedience inseparable from the spirit.
But the breath of revolt against orthodox eternals was at
this time beginning to reach us in Polotzk from the
greater world, notably from America. Sons whose parents had impoverished
(07:33):
themselves by paying the fine for non appearance in military
duty in order to save their darlings from the inevitable
sins of violated Judaism well in the service sent home
portraits of themselves with their faces shaved, and the grieved
old fathers and mothers, after offering up special prayers for
the renegades and giving charity in their name, exhibited the
significant portraits on their parlor tables. My mother's own nephew
(07:57):
went no farther than Vilna, ten hours journey from Polite
to learn to cut his beard, and even within our
town limits, young women of education were beginning to reject
the Whig after marriage. A notorious example was the beautiful
daughter of Laza the Rov, who was not restrained by
her father's conspicuous relation to Judaism from exhibiting her lovely
(08:17):
black curls like a maiden. And it was a further
sign of the times that the Rav did not disown
his daughter. What wonder then, that my poor mother, shaken
by these foreshadowings of revolution in our mist and by
the express authority of her husband, gave up the emblem
of matrimonial chastity with but a passing struggle. Considering how
(08:38):
the heavy burdens which she had borne from childhood had
never allowed her time to think for herself at all,
but had obliged her always to tread blindly in the
beaten pats. I think it greatly to her credit that
in her puzzling situation she did not lose her poise entirely.
Bread to submission. Submit she must, and when she perceived
a conflict of authorities, she prepared to accept the new
(09:00):
order of things under which her children's future was to
be formed. Wherein she showed her native adaptability, the readiness
to fall into line, which is one of the most
charming traits of her gentle self effacing nature. My father
gave my mother very little time to adjust herself. He
was only three years from the old world, with its
(09:20):
settled prejudices. Considering his education, he had thought out a
good deal for himself, but his line of thinking had
not as yet brought him to include woman in the
intellectual emancipation for which he himself had been so eager
even in Russia. This was still in the day when
he was astonished to learn that women had written books,
had used their minds their imaginations unaided. He still rated
(09:43):
the mental capacity of the average woman as only a
little above that of the cattle she tended. He held
it to be a wife's duty to follow her husband
in all things. He could do all the thinking for
the family, he believed, and, being convinced that to hold
to the outward forms of Orthodox Judaism was to be
hampered in the race for Americanization, he did not hesitate
(10:04):
to order our family life on unorthodox lines. There was
no conscious despotism in this. It was only making manly
haste to realize an ideal, the nobility of which there
was no one to dispute. My mother, as we know,
hid not the initial impulse to depart from ancient usage
that my father had in his habitual skepticism. He had
always been a nonconformist. In his heart. She bore lovingly
(10:28):
the yoke of prescribed conduct. Individual freedom to him was
the only tolerable condition of life. To her, it was confusion.
My mother therefore gradually divested herself at my father's bidding
of the mantle of Orthodox observance, but the process cost
her many a pang, because the fabric of that venerable
garment was interwoven with the fabric of her soul. My
(10:52):
father did not attempt to touch the fundamentals of her faith.
He certainly did not forbid her to honor God by
loving her neighbor, which perhaps not far from being the
whole of Judaism. If his loud denials of the existence
of God influenced her to reconsider her creed, it was
merely an incidental result of the freedom of expression he
was so eager to practice after his life of enforced hypocrisy.
(11:17):
As the opinions of a mere woman on matters so
abstract as religion did not interest him in the least,
he counted it no particular triumph if he observed that
my mother weakened in her faith as years went by.
He allowed her to keep a Jewish kitchen as long
as she pleased, But he did not want us children
to refuse invitations to the table of our gentile neighbors.
(11:37):
He would have no bar to our social intercourse with
the world around us, for only by freely sharing the
life of our neighbors could we come into our full
inheritance of American freedom and opportunity On the Holy days.
He bought my mother a ticket for the synagogue, but
the children he sent to school On Sabbath Eve. My
mother might light the consecrated candles, but he kept the
(11:58):
store open until Sunday morning. My mother might believe and
worship as she pleased, up to the point where her
Orthodoxy began to interfere with the American progress of the family.
The price that all of us paid for this disorganization
of our family life has been levied on every immigrant
Jewish household, where the first generation clings to the traditions
(12:19):
of the old world, while the second generation leads the
life of the new. Nothing more pitiful could be written
in the annals of the Jews. Nothing more inevitable, nothing
more hopeful. Hopeful, yes alike, for the Jew and for
the country that has given him shelter. For Israel is
not the only party that has put up a forfeit
in this contest. The nations may well sit by and watch.
(12:43):
The struggle for humanity has a staken it. I say this,
whose life has borne witness, whose heart is heavy with revelations,
It has not made. And I speak for thousands, oh,
for thousands. My gray hairs are too few for me
to let these pages trespass the limits. I have said
myself that part of my life, which contains the climax
(13:03):
of my personal drama, I must leave to my grandchildren
to record. My father might speak and tell how in
time he discovered that in his first violent rejection of
everything old and established, he cast from him much that
he afterwards missed. He might tell to what extent he
later retraced his steps seeking to recover what he had
learned to value anew, how it fared with his avowed
(13:25):
irreligion when put to the extreme test, to what, in
short his emancipation amounted. And he, like myself, would speak
for thousands. My grandchildren, for all I know, may have
a graver task than I have set them. Perhaps they
may have to testify that the faith of Israel is
a heritage that no heir in the direct line has
the power to alienate from his successors. Even I, with
(13:49):
my limited perspective, think it doubtful if the conversion of
the Jew to any alien belief or disbelief is ever
thoroughly accomplished. What positive affirmation of the persistence of Dudaism
and the blood of my descendants may have to make
I may not be present to hear. It would be
superfluous to state that none of these hints and prophecies
troubled me. At the time when I horrified the schoolyard
(14:11):
by denying the existence of God on the authority of
my father, and defended my right to my atheism on
the authority of the Constitution, I considered myself absolutely, eternally,
delightfully emancipated from the yoke of indefensible superstitions. I was
wild with indignation and pity when I remembered how my
poor brother had been cruelly tormented because he did not
(14:34):
want to sit in header and learn what was after
all false or useless. I knew now why poor Rebleba
had been unable to answer my questions. It was because
the truth was not whispered outside America. I was very
much in love with my enlightenment and eager for opportunities
to give proof of it. It was Miss Dillingham, she
(14:55):
who helped me in so many ways, who unconsciously put
me to an early test, the result of which gave
me a shock that I did not get over for
many a day. She invited me to tea one day,
and I came in much trepidation. It was my first
entrance into a genuine American household, my first meal at
a gentile, yes, a Christian board. Would I know how
(15:17):
to behave properly? I do not know whether I betrayed
my anxiety. I am certain only that I was all
eyes and ears, that nothing should escape me which might
serve to guide me. This, after all, was a normal
state for me to be in. So I suppose I
looked natural, no matter how much I stared. I had
been accustomed to consider my table manners irreproachable. But America
(15:39):
was not Polotzk, as my father was ever saying. So
I proceeded very cautiously with my spoons and forks. I
was cunning enough to try to conceal my uncertainty by
being just a little bit slow. I did not get
to any given spoon until the others at table had
shown me which It was. All went well until a
platter was passed with a kind of meat that was
(16:00):
strange to me. Some mischievous instinct told me that it
was ham, forbidden food, and I, the liberal, the free
was afraid to touch it. I had a terrible moment
of surprise, mortification, self contempt. But I helped myself to
a slice of ham nevertheless, and hung my head over
my plate to hide my confusion. I was furious with
(16:22):
myself for my weakness. I to be afraid of a
pink piece of pig's flesh, who had defied at least
two religions in defense of free thought. And I began
to reduce my ham to indivisible atoms, determined to eat
more of it than anybody at the table. Alas I
learned that to eat in defense of principles was not
so easy as to talk. I ate. But only a
(16:45):
newly abnegated Jew can understand with what squirming, what protesting
of the inner man, what exquisite abhorrence of myself? That
spartan boy who allowed the stolen fox hidden in his
bosom to consume his vitals rather than be detected in
the theft, showed no such miracle of self control as
did I, sitting there at my friend's tea table, eating
(17:06):
Unjewish meat, and to think that so ridiculous a thing
as a scrap of meat should be the symbol and
test of things so august to think that in the
mental life of a half grown child should be reflected
the struggles and triumphs of ages. Over and over and
over again, I discover that I am a wonderful thing,
being human, that I am the image of the universe,
(17:27):
being myself, That I am the repository of all the
wisdom in the world, being alive and sane at the
beginning of this twentieth century the air of the ages
am I, And all that has been is in me,
and shall continue to be in my immortal self. End
of Chapter twelve.
Chapter twelve of The Promised Land. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by bridget Gage, The Promised
Land by Mary Anton, Chapter twelve Miracles. It was not
always in admiration that the finger was pointed at me.
One day I found myself the center of an excited
group in the middle of the schoolyard, with a dozen
(00:21):
girls interrupting each other to express their disapproval of me,
For I had coolly told them, in answer to a question,
that I did not believe in God. How had I
arrived at such a conviction? How had I come from
prayer and fasting and psalm singing to extreme impiety, alas
my backsliding had cost me no traval of spirit, always
(00:43):
weak in my faith, playing at sanctity as I played
at soldiers, just as I was in the mood or not.
I had neglected my books of devotion and given myself
up to profane literature at the first opportunity in Vitebsk,
and I never took up my prayer book again. On
my return to Polait, America loomed so near that my
imagination was fully occupied, and I did not revive the
(01:06):
secret experiments with which I used to test the nature
and intention of deity. It was more to me that
I was going to America than that I might not
be going to Heaven. And when we joined my father
and I saw that he did not wear the sacred
fringes and did not put on the flactories and pray,
I was neither surprised nor shocked. Remembering the Sabbath night
(01:26):
when he had with his own hand turned out the lamp.
When I saw him go out to work on Sabbath,
exactly as on a week day, I understood why God
had not annihilated me with his lightnings that time when
I purposely carried something in my pocket on Sabbath, there
was no God and there was no sin. And I
ran out to play, pleased to find that I was
free like other little girls in the street, instead of
(01:49):
being hemmed about with prohibitions and obligations at every step.
And yet, if the golden truth of Judaism had not
been handed me in the motley rags of formalism, I
might not I have been so ready to put away
my religion. It was Rachel Goldstein who provoked my avowal
of atheism. She asked if I wasn't going to stay
out of school during Passover? And I said, no, wasn't
(02:12):
I a Jew? She wanted to know, No, I wasn't.
I was a free thinker? What was that? I didn't
believe in God? Rachel was horrified why Kitty Maloney believed
in God and Kitty was only a Catholic. She appealed
to Kitty, Kitty Maloney, come over here, don't you believe
in God? There? Now? Mary Anton? Mary Anton says she
(02:36):
doesn't believe in God. Rachel Goldstein's horror is duplicated. Kitty Maloney,
who used to mock Rachel's Jewish accent, instantly becomes her
valuable ally and proceeds to annihilate me by plying me
with crucial questions. You don't believe in God? Then who
made you? Mary Anton? Nature made me? Nature made you?
(02:57):
What's that? It's everything? It's the trees. No, it's what
makes the trees grow. That's what it is. But God
made the trees, Mary Anton from Rachel and Kitty in chorus, Maggie,
O'Reilly listen to Mary Anton. She says there isn't any God.
She says the trees made her. Rachel and Kitty and Maggie,
(03:18):
Sadie and Annie and Becky made a circle around me
and pressed me with questions, and mocked me, and threatened
me with hell flames and utter extinction. I held my
ground against them, all obstinately enough, though my argument was
exceedingly lame. I glibly repeated phrases I had heard my
father use, but I had no real understanding of his
(03:38):
atheistic doctrines. I had been surprised into this dispute. I
had no spontaneous interest in the subject. My mind was
occupied with other things. But as the number of my
opponents grew and I saw how unanimously they condemned me,
my indifference turned into a heat of indignation. The actual
point to issue was as little as ever to me,
(03:59):
but I perceived that a crowd of free Americans were
disputing the right of a fellow citizen to have any
kind of God she chose. I knew from my father's
teaching that this persecution was contrary to the Constitution of
the United States, and I held my ground as befitted
the defender of a cause. George Washington would not have
treated me as Rachel Goldstein and Kitty Maloney were doing.
(04:21):
This is a free country, I reminded them in the
middle of the argument. The excitement in the yard amounted
to a toy riot. When the squowbell rang and the
children began to file in, I stood out there as
long as any of my enemies remained, although it was
my habit to go to my room very promptly, And
as the foes of American liberty crowded and pushed in
(04:41):
the line, whispering to those who had not heard that
a heretic had been discovered in their mist the teacher
who kept the line in the corridor was obliged to
scold and pull the noisy ones into order, and Sadie
Kohen told her in tones of awe what the commotion
was about. Miss Bland waited till the children had filed
before she asked me, in a tone encouraging confidence, to
(05:04):
give my version of the story. This I did huskily
but fearlessly, and the teacher, who was a woman of tact,
did not smile or commit herself in any way. She
was sorry that the children had been rude to me,
but she thought they would not trouble me any more
if I let the subject drop. She made me understand
somewhat as Miss Dillingham had done on the occasion of
(05:25):
my whispering during prayer that it was proper American conduct
to avoid religious arguments on school territory. I felt honored
by this private initiation into the doctrine of the separation
of church and state, and I went to my seat
with a good deal of dignity. My alarm about the
safety of the constitution alate by the teacher's calmness. This
(05:46):
is not so strictly the story of the second generation
that I may not properly give a brief account of
how it fared with my mother when my father undertook
to purge his house of superstition. The process of her emancipation,
it is true, was not obvious to me at the time.
But what I observed of her outward conduct has been
interpreted by my subsequent experience, so that to day I
(06:08):
understand how it happens that all the year round my
mother keeps the same day of rest as her gentile neighbors.
But when the ramshorn blows on the day of Atonement,
calling upon Israel to cleanse its heart from sin and
draw nearer to the God of its fathers, her soul
was stirred as of old, and she needs must join
in the ancient service. It means I have come to
(06:28):
know that she has dropped the husk and retained the
kernel of Judaism. But years were required for this process
of instinctive selection. My father, in his ambition to make
Americans of us, was rather headlong and strenuous in his methods.
To my mother, on the eve of departure for the
New World, he wrote boldly that progressive Jews in America
(06:49):
did not spend their days in praying, and he urged
her to leave her wig in Polotzk as a first
step of progress. My mother, like the majority of women
in the pale, had all her life life taken her
religion on authority. So she was only fulfilling her duty
to her husband when she took his hint and set
out upon her journey in her own hair. Not that
it was done without reluctance. The Jewish faith in her
(07:12):
was deeply rooted, as in the best of Jews it
always is. The law of the Fathers was binding to her,
and the outward symbols of obedience inseparable from the spirit.
But the breath of revolt against orthodox eternals was at
this time beginning to reach us in Polotzk from the
greater world, notably from America. Sons whose parents had impoverished
(07:33):
themselves by paying the fine for non appearance in military
duty in order to save their darlings from the inevitable
sins of violated Judaism well in the service sent home
portraits of themselves with their faces shaved, and the grieved
old fathers and mothers, after offering up special prayers for
the renegades and giving charity in their name, exhibited the
significant portraits on their parlor tables. My mother's own nephew
(07:57):
went no farther than Vilna, ten hours journey from Polite
to learn to cut his beard, and even within our
town limits, young women of education were beginning to reject
the Whig after marriage. A notorious example was the beautiful
daughter of Laza the Rov, who was not restrained by
her father's conspicuous relation to Judaism from exhibiting her lovely
(08:17):
black curls like a maiden. And it was a further
sign of the times that the Rav did not disown
his daughter. What wonder then, that my poor mother, shaken
by these foreshadowings of revolution in our mist and by
the express authority of her husband, gave up the emblem
of matrimonial chastity with but a passing struggle. Considering how
(08:38):
the heavy burdens which she had borne from childhood had
never allowed her time to think for herself at all,
but had obliged her always to tread blindly in the
beaten pats. I think it greatly to her credit that
in her puzzling situation she did not lose her poise entirely.
Bread to submission. Submit she must, and when she perceived
a conflict of authorities, she prepared to accept the new
(09:00):
order of things under which her children's future was to
be formed. Wherein she showed her native adaptability, the readiness
to fall into line, which is one of the most
charming traits of her gentle self effacing nature. My father
gave my mother very little time to adjust herself. He
was only three years from the old world, with its
(09:20):
settled prejudices. Considering his education, he had thought out a
good deal for himself, but his line of thinking had
not as yet brought him to include woman in the
intellectual emancipation for which he himself had been so eager
even in Russia. This was still in the day when
he was astonished to learn that women had written books,
had used their minds their imaginations unaided. He still rated
(09:43):
the mental capacity of the average woman as only a
little above that of the cattle she tended. He held
it to be a wife's duty to follow her husband
in all things. He could do all the thinking for
the family, he believed, and, being convinced that to hold
to the outward forms of Orthodox Judaism was to be
hampered in the race for Americanization, he did not hesitate
(10:04):
to order our family life on unorthodox lines. There was
no conscious despotism in this. It was only making manly
haste to realize an ideal, the nobility of which there
was no one to dispute. My mother, as we know,
hid not the initial impulse to depart from ancient usage
that my father had in his habitual skepticism. He had
always been a nonconformist. In his heart. She bore lovingly
(10:28):
the yoke of prescribed conduct. Individual freedom to him was
the only tolerable condition of life. To her, it was confusion.
My mother therefore gradually divested herself at my father's bidding
of the mantle of Orthodox observance, but the process cost
her many a pang, because the fabric of that venerable
garment was interwoven with the fabric of her soul. My
(10:52):
father did not attempt to touch the fundamentals of her faith.
He certainly did not forbid her to honor God by
loving her neighbor, which perhaps not far from being the
whole of Judaism. If his loud denials of the existence
of God influenced her to reconsider her creed, it was
merely an incidental result of the freedom of expression he
was so eager to practice after his life of enforced hypocrisy.
(11:17):
As the opinions of a mere woman on matters so
abstract as religion did not interest him in the least,
he counted it no particular triumph if he observed that
my mother weakened in her faith as years went by.
He allowed her to keep a Jewish kitchen as long
as she pleased, But he did not want us children
to refuse invitations to the table of our gentile neighbors.
(11:37):
He would have no bar to our social intercourse with
the world around us, for only by freely sharing the
life of our neighbors could we come into our full
inheritance of American freedom and opportunity On the Holy days.
He bought my mother a ticket for the synagogue, but
the children he sent to school On Sabbath Eve. My
mother might light the consecrated candles, but he kept the
(11:58):
store open until Sunday morning. My mother might believe and
worship as she pleased, up to the point where her
Orthodoxy began to interfere with the American progress of the family.
The price that all of us paid for this disorganization
of our family life has been levied on every immigrant
Jewish household, where the first generation clings to the traditions
(12:19):
of the old world, while the second generation leads the
life of the new. Nothing more pitiful could be written
in the annals of the Jews. Nothing more inevitable, nothing
more hopeful. Hopeful, yes alike, for the Jew and for
the country that has given him shelter. For Israel is
not the only party that has put up a forfeit
in this contest. The nations may well sit by and watch.
(12:43):
The struggle for humanity has a staken it. I say this,
whose life has borne witness, whose heart is heavy with revelations,
It has not made. And I speak for thousands, oh,
for thousands. My gray hairs are too few for me
to let these pages trespass the limits. I have said
myself that part of my life, which contains the climax
(13:03):
of my personal drama, I must leave to my grandchildren
to record. My father might speak and tell how in
time he discovered that in his first violent rejection of
everything old and established, he cast from him much that
he afterwards missed. He might tell to what extent he
later retraced his steps seeking to recover what he had
learned to value anew, how it fared with his avowed
(13:25):
irreligion when put to the extreme test, to what, in
short his emancipation amounted. And he, like myself, would speak
for thousands. My grandchildren, for all I know, may have
a graver task than I have set them. Perhaps they
may have to testify that the faith of Israel is
a heritage that no heir in the direct line has
the power to alienate from his successors. Even I, with
(13:49):
my limited perspective, think it doubtful if the conversion of
the Jew to any alien belief or disbelief is ever
thoroughly accomplished. What positive affirmation of the persistence of Dudaism
and the blood of my descendants may have to make
I may not be present to hear. It would be
superfluous to state that none of these hints and prophecies
troubled me. At the time when I horrified the schoolyard
(14:11):
by denying the existence of God on the authority of
my father, and defended my right to my atheism on
the authority of the Constitution, I considered myself absolutely, eternally,
delightfully emancipated from the yoke of indefensible superstitions. I was
wild with indignation and pity when I remembered how my
poor brother had been cruelly tormented because he did not
(14:34):
want to sit in header and learn what was after
all false or useless. I knew now why poor Rebleba
had been unable to answer my questions. It was because
the truth was not whispered outside America. I was very
much in love with my enlightenment and eager for opportunities
to give proof of it. It was Miss Dillingham, she
(14:55):
who helped me in so many ways, who unconsciously put
me to an early test, the result of which gave
me a shock that I did not get over for
many a day. She invited me to tea one day,
and I came in much trepidation. It was my first
entrance into a genuine American household, my first meal at
a gentile, yes, a Christian board. Would I know how
(15:17):
to behave properly? I do not know whether I betrayed
my anxiety. I am certain only that I was all
eyes and ears, that nothing should escape me which might
serve to guide me. This, after all, was a normal
state for me to be in. So I suppose I
looked natural, no matter how much I stared. I had
been accustomed to consider my table manners irreproachable. But America
(15:39):
was not Polotzk, as my father was ever saying. So
I proceeded very cautiously with my spoons and forks. I
was cunning enough to try to conceal my uncertainty by
being just a little bit slow. I did not get
to any given spoon until the others at table had
shown me which It was. All went well until a
platter was passed with a kind of meat that was
(16:00):
strange to me. Some mischievous instinct told me that it
was ham, forbidden food, and I, the liberal, the free
was afraid to touch it. I had a terrible moment
of surprise, mortification, self contempt. But I helped myself to
a slice of ham nevertheless, and hung my head over
my plate to hide my confusion. I was furious with
(16:22):
myself for my weakness. I to be afraid of a
pink piece of pig's flesh, who had defied at least
two religions in defense of free thought. And I began
to reduce my ham to indivisible atoms, determined to eat
more of it than anybody at the table. Alas I
learned that to eat in defense of principles was not
so easy as to talk. I ate. But only a
(16:45):
newly abnegated Jew can understand with what squirming, what protesting
of the inner man, what exquisite abhorrence of myself? That
spartan boy who allowed the stolen fox hidden in his
bosom to consume his vitals rather than be detected in
the theft, showed no such miracle of self control as
did I, sitting there at my friend's tea table, eating
(17:06):
Unjewish meat, and to think that so ridiculous a thing
as a scrap of meat should be the symbol and
test of things so august to think that in the
mental life of a half grown child should be reflected
the struggles and triumphs of ages. Over and over and
over again, I discover that I am a wonderful thing,
being human, that I am the image of the universe,
(17:27):
being myself, That I am the repository of all the
wisdom in the world, being alive and sane at the
beginning of this twentieth century the air of the ages
am I, And all that has been is in me,
and shall continue to be in my immortal self. End
of Chapter twelve.
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