The middle four days of Passover. The house is dark. My mother weeps. The children are hungry. There is nobody to cook a bit of food for them. Mother lies sick in bed, and doesn’t stop lamenting over the terrible events, which happened so suddently to her. My poor mother!...she had for so long hoped, that after all those years of sacrifice, need, and deprivation, after all the troubles from her elder sons, that in her twilight years she might experience at least a bit of motherly pride from me, her younger son. An this is where her great hopes had led...all her sweet dreams....to nothing! This was simply more than she could bear...the present calamity was so terrible that it screamed out to the heavens, and she couldn't calm herself. No...she would not be silent! She would run, she would scream, so that "heaven and earth" would have to stop and pay heed! The spirits of her ancestors would surely intercede on her behalf, and help to rescue her wayward child from "Gentile hands"....from those big-city, paganized high school students, who had entangled him in their wicked snares....

But for now, she was flat on her back, shackled to her bed. Thanks to all the aggravation, her rheumatism had taken hold of her with a vengeance. She couldn’t move from where she lay. She could only cry and cry. My sister Pesheh, as usual in such circumstances, left her own small children in God’s hands, and came over personally to take over the running of mother's household. With the help of my mother's usual remedies, salves and lotions, she began to relieve her aching rheumatism.

My father went about in a rage...he didn't even look in my direction, and I also kept silent. There we were...two strangers. My mother laid the whole blame on his shoulders:

"The doings of the fathers will be visited on the sons"! she screamed...it was from him, the father, that we children had inherited our dark attraction to books! Because when they lived in the village, wasn't it he, who used to stay up all night with his "books"? "And now, is it any better?"

My father argued back:

"I am permitted....me, a father of children, a grandfather, won’t be harmed by illicit books....but for such a young fool as him, they are deadly poison."

"But what kind of future will he have now?"

And concerning my "future", there now raged a bitter war between the two sides - my parents from the one side....and my Warsay brother and myself, from the other side.

My father had a ready solution: seeing as how I had cast aside the Gemorrah, and begun instead already to learn Russian, secular knowledge, I must not be allowed to go back to Brisk, to "thumb my nose at the world", God forbid! Rather, he maintained, I would have to cast aside all my childish notions, and learn a trade. I could be a shomemaker, a tailor, a blacksmith.....as long as it was an honest trade.....

Hearing such words, my mother jumped to her feet as though on fire...she started shouting at him with an incredulous voice:

"Listen to you...where has anyone ever heard that a father, himself a literate man, should try to drive his own son to tailoring and blacksmithing?! Never!!" Her enemies should never live to see the day! It would be "over her dead body"!

My brother in Warsaw, the second "side", who spoke with my voice, like a dybbuk, screamedd:

"I WILL go back to Brisk. I will learn a modern profession: typography! photography! accounting!" I no longer had any fear. I shouted at the top of my voice. After all, I had nothing to lose. My father's anger, his beatings, his stubbornness...had pushed me beyond my limit, and I was furious....

Who knows how long this war might have gone on, if it were not for that Sabbath afternoon, between prayers, which completely changed my future path in life....that afternoon, which I will never forget, is deeply etched into my memory.

It was already getting dark. My father was off in the House of Study, saying his evening prayers. I was back in the house. I was sitting by the window, tracing shapes with my finger on the dark-blue pane. All kinds of thoughts were running through my head. All at once, my mother dragged herself over to me on her sick feet, pulled her chair close to mine, and started to stroke my cheek and my hair. She began to speak in a quavering voice:

"Falikl, my son: my whole life, I have sacrificed for you. I worked day and night....sewing, cooking, cleaning...my hands aching, my eyes blurred over.....all so that you should't have to go naked and barefoot. I've gone without eating, without sleeping, my whole life gotten by on a shoe-string...all so that you shouldn’t have to go hungry. I hoped, that later my children would pay me back with a bit of pride...that I would warm myself by the light of your holy learning. Cruel fate has already sent me those black years, and taken away from my arms three grown children, and scattered them over the wide world....

"Now you, my child, are my last hope. I have pinned all my hopes on you. That is what has given me the strength to live, to go about on my sick, tired feet. And in the end, have you also forgotten about your mother?..and for all my years of caring and sacrifice, are you now going to pay me back with pain and sorrow? Tell me the truth, my son, is it not so? Have I earned this from you?"

It was getting darker and darker. Sabbath had ended. Through the small window ther now appeared distant, twinkling stars. My mother's words had overwhelmed me. I felt that my heart was bursting from love and pity fro her. At that moment, I was ready to follow anything that she asked me to do. Then her voice became even quieter, more confidential and mournful. She continued:

"Think it over, my son....turn yourself around, my son, back to God and his Torah....it’s not to late. Promise me, my child, that your will not bring me any more troubles, that you will not shame your poor mother. Remember, my child, if you reject my plea, I may not have much time left....but you will be to blame...you will carry the guilt forever...."

I couldn't let her go on...I pressed my face against hers...her tears and may tears flowed together, as though from a single source, mingling together on our hot, burning cheeks....

My mother had won....