UNDER THE ROMANOFFS
THE plaything of a heartless bureaucracy, the natural prey of all the savage elements of society, loaded with fetters in one place, and in another driven out like some wild beast, the Russian Jew finds that for him, at least, life is composed of little else than bitterness, suffering, and degradation.
For magnitude and gloom the tragical situation has no parallel in history. Some six millions of human beings are unceasingly subjected to a State-directed torture which is both destructive and demoralizing, and constitutes at once a crime against humanity and an international perplexity.
LUCIEN WOLF, 1912.
EACH crime that wakes in man the beast,
Is visited upon his kind.
The lust of mobs, the greed of priest,
The tyranny of kings, combined
To root his seed from earth again,
His record is one cry of pain.
Coward? Not he, who faces death,
Who singly against worlds has fought,
For what? A name he may not breathe,
For liberty of prayer and thought.
EMMA LAZARUS, 1882.
‘SOLDIERS OF NICHOLAS’[34]
THERE was one thing the Gentiles might do to me worse than burning or rending. It was what was done to unprotected Jewish children who fell into the hands of priests or nuns. They might baptize me. That would be worse than death by torture. Every Jewish child had that feeling. There were stories by the dozen of Jewish boys who were kidnapped by the Czar’s agents and brought up in Gentile families till they were old enough to enter the army, where they served until forty years of age; and all those years the priests tried, by bribes and daily tortures, to force them to accept baptism, but in vain. This was the time of Nicholas I.
Some of these ‘soldiers of Nicholas’, as they were called, were taken as little boys of seven or eight—snatched from their mothers’ laps. They were carried to distant villages, where their friends could never trace them, and turned over to some dirty, brutal peasant, who used them like slaves, and kept them with the pigs. No two were ever left together; and they were given false names, so that they were entirely cut off from their own world. And then the lonely child was turned over to the priests, and he was flogged and starved and terrified—a little helpless boy who cried for his mother; but still herefused to be baptized. The priests promised him good things to eat, fine clothes, and freedom from labour; but the boy turned away, and said his prayers secretly—the Hebrew prayers.
As he grew older, severer tortures were invented for him; still he refused baptism. By this time he had forgotten his mother’s face, and of his prayers perhaps only the ‘Shema’ remained in his memory; but he was a Jew, and nothing would make him change. After he entered the army, he was bribed with promises of promotions and honours. He remained a private, and endured the cruellest discipline. When he was discharged, at the age of forty, he was a broken man, without a home, without a clue to his origin, and he spent the rest of his life wandering among Jewish settlements, searching for his family, hiding the scars of torture under his rags, begging his way from door to door.
There were men in our town whose faces made you old in a minute. They had served Nicholas I, and come back, unbaptized.
MARY ANTIN, 1911.
BONTZYE SHWEIG[35]
(BONTZYE THE SILENT)
DOWN here, in this world, Silent Bontzye’s death made no impression at all. Ask any one you like who Bontzye was, how he lived, and what he died of; whether of heart failure, or whether his strength gave out, or whether his back broke under a heavy load, and they won’t know. Perhaps, after all, he died of hunger.
Bontzye lived quietly and died quietly. He passed through our world like a shadow. He lived like a little dun-coloured grain of sand on the sea-shore, among millions of his kind; and when the wind lifted him and blew him over to the other side of the sea, nobody noticed it. When he was alive, the mud in the street preserved no impression of his feet; after his death the wind overturned the little board on his grave. The grave-digger’s wife found it a long way off from the spot, and boiled a potful of potatoes over it. Three days after that, the grave-digger had forgotten where he had laid him.
A shadow! His likeness remained photographed in nobody’s brain, in nobody’s heart; not a trace of him remained.
‘No kith, no kin!’ He lived and died alone.
Had the world been less busy, some one might have remarked that Bontzye (also a human being) went about with two extinguished eyes and fearfully hollow cheeks; that even when he had no load on hisshoulders his head drooped earthward as though, while yet alive, he were looking for his grave. When they carried Bontzye into the hospital, his corner in the underground lodging was soon filled—there were ten of his like waiting for it, and they put it up for auction among themselves. When they carried him from the hospital bed to the dead-house, there were twenty poor sick persons waiting for the bed. When he had been taken out of the dead-house, they brought in twenty bodies from under a building that had fallen in. Who knows how long he will rest in his grave? Who knows how many are waiting for the little plot of ground?
A quiet birth, a quiet life, a quiet death, and a quieter burial.
But it was not so in the Other World. There Bontzye’s death made a great impression.
The blast of the great Messianic Shofar sounded through all the seven heavens; Bontzye Shweig has left the earth! The largest angels with the broadest wings flew about and told one another; Bontzye Shweig is to take his seat in the Heavenly Academy! In Paradise there was a noise and a joyful tumult: Bontzye Shweig! Just fancy! Bontzye Shweig!
Little child-angels with sparkling eyes, gold thread-work wings, and silver slippers, ran delightedly to meet him. The rustle of the wings, the clatter of the little slippers, and the merry laughter of the fresh, rosy mouths, filled all the heavens and reached to the Throne of Glory. Abraham our father stood in the gate, his right hand stretched out with a hearty greeting, and a sweet smile lit up his old face.
What are they wheeling through heaven? Two angels are pushing a golden arm-chair into Paradise for Bontzye Shweig.
What flashed so brightly? They were carrying past a gold crown set with precious stones all for Bontzye Shweig.
‘Before the decision of the Heavenly Court has been given?’ ask the saints, not quite without jealousy. ‘Oh’, reply the angels, ‘that will be a mere formality. Even the prosecutor won’t say a word against Bontzye Shweig. The case will not last five minutes.’ Just consider! Bontzye Shweig!
All this time, Bontzye, just as in the other world, was too frightened to speak. He is sure it is all a dream, or else simply a mistake. He dared not raise his eyes, lest the dream should vanish, lest he should wake up in some cave full of snakes and lizards. He was afraid to speak, afraid to move, lest he should be recognized and flung into the pit. He trembles and does not hear the angels’ compliments, does not see how they dance round him, makes no answer to the greeting of Abraham our father, and when he is led into the presence of the Heavenly Court he does not even wish it ‘Good morning!’ He is beside himself with terror. ‘Who knows what rich man, what rabbi, what saint, they take me for? He will come—and that will be the end of me!’ His terror is such, he never even hears the president call out: ‘The case of Bontzye Shweig!’ adding, as he hands the deeds to the advocate, ‘Read, but make haste!’
The whole hall goes round and round in Bontzye’s eyes; there is a rushing in his ears. And throughthe rushing he hears more and more clearly the voice of the advocate, speaking sweetly as a violin.
‘His name’, he hears, ‘fitted him like the dress made for a slender figure by the hand of an artist-tailor.’
‘What is he talking about?’ wondered Bontzye, and he heard an impatient voice break in with: ‘No similes, please!’
‘He never’, continued the advocate, ‘was heard to complain of either God or man; there was never a flash of hatred in his eye; he never lifted it with a claim on heaven.’
Still Bontzye does not understand, and once again the hard voice interrupts: ‘No rhetoric, please!’
‘Job gave way—this one was more unfortunate.’
‘Facts, dry facts.’
‘He kept silent’, the advocate went on, ‘even when his mother died and he was given a stepmother at thirteen years old—a serpent, a vixen.’
‘Can they mean me after all?’ thought Bontzye.
‘No insinuations against a third party’, said the president, angrily.
‘She grudged him every mouthful—stale, mouldy bread, tendons instead of meat—and she drank coffee with cream.’
‘Keep to the subject’, ordered the president.
‘She grudged him everything but her finger-nails, and his black and blue body showed through the holes in his torn and fusty clothes. Winter time, in the hardest frost, he had to chop wood for her, barefoot in the yard; and his hands were too young and too weak, the logs too thick, the hatchet too blunt. But he kept silent, even to his father.’
‘To that drunkard?’ laughs the accuser, and Bontzye feels cold in every limb.
‘And always alone’, he continued; ‘no playmates, no school, nor teaching of any kind—never a whole garment—never a free moment.’
‘Facts, please!’ reminded the president.
‘He kept silent even later, when his father seized him by the hair in a fit of drunkenness and flung him out into the street on a snowy winter’s night. He quietly picked himself up out of the snow and ran whither his feet carried him. He kept silent all the way to the great town—however hungry he might be, he only begged with his eyes. Bathed in a cold sweat, crushed under heavy loads, his empty stomach convulsed with hunger—he kept silent. Bespattered with mud, spat at, driven with his load off the pavement and into the road among the cabs, carts, and tramways, looking death in the eyes every moment. He never calculated the difference between other people’s lot and his own—he kept silent. And he never insisted loudly on his pay; he stood in the doorway like a beggar, with a dog-like pleading in his eyes—‘Come again later!’ and he went like a shadow to come again later, and beg for his wage more humbly than before. He kept silent even when they cheated him of part, or threw in a false coin.
‘He took everything in silence.’
‘They mean me after all’, thought Bontzye.
‘Once’, continued the advocate, after a sip of water, ‘a change came into his life: there came flying along a carriage on rubber tires, drawn by two runaway horses. The driver already lay somedistance off on the pavement with a cracked skull, the terrified horses foamed at the mouth, sparks shot from their hoofs, their eyes shone like fiery lamps on a winter’s night—and in the carriage, more dead than alive, sat a man.
‘And Bontzye stopped the horses. And the man he had saved was a charitable Jew who was not ungrateful. He put the dead man’s whip into Bontzye’s hands, and Bontzye became a coachman. More than that, he was provided with a wife. And Bontzye kept silent!’
‘Me, they mean me!’ Bontzye assured himself again, and yet had not the courage to give a glance at the Heavenly Court.
He listens to the advocate further:
‘He kept silent also when his protector became bankrupt and did not pay him his wages. He kept silent when his wife ran away from him.’
‘Me, they mean me!’ Now he is sure of it.
‘He kept silent even’, began the angelic advocate once more in a still softer and sadder voice, ‘when the same philanthropist paid all his creditors their due but him—and even when (riding once again in a carriage with rubber tires and fiery horses) he knocked Bontzye down and drove over him. He kept silent even in the hospital, where one may cry out. He kept silent when the doctor would not come to his bedside without being paid fifteen kopeks, and when the attendant demanded another five—for changing his linen.
‘He kept silent in the death struggle—silent in death.
‘Not a word against God; not a word against men!
‘Dixi!’
Once more Bontzye trembled all over. He knew that after the advocate comes the prosecutor. Who knows what he will say? Bontzye himself remembered nothing of his life. Even in the other world he forgot every moment what had happened in the one before. The advocate had recalled everything to his mind. Who knows what the prosecutor will not remind him of?
‘Gentlemen’, begins the prosecutor, in a voice biting and acid as vinegar—but he breaks off.
‘Gentlemen’, he begins again, but his voice is milder, and a second time he breaks off.
Then from out the same throat comes in a voice that is almost gentle: ‘Gentlemen! He was silent! I will be silent too!’
There is a hush—and there sounds in front a new, soft, trembling voice: ‘Bontzye, my child!’ It speaks like a harp. ‘My dear child, Bontzye!’
And Bontzye’s heart melts within him. Now he would lift up his eyes, but they are blinded with tears; he never felt such sweet emotion before. ‘My child! Bontzye!’—no one, since his mother died, had spoken to him with such words in such a voice.
‘My child’, continues the presiding judge, ‘you have suffered and kept silent; there is no whole limb, no whole bone in your body without a scar, without a wound, not a fibre of your soul that has not bled—and you kept silent. There they did not understand. Perhaps you yourself did not know that you mighthave cried out, and that at your cry the walls of Jericho would have shaken and fallen. You yourself knew nothing of your hidden power.
‘In the other world your silence was not understood, but that is the World of Delusion; in the World of Truth you will receive your reward. The Heavenly Court will not judge you; the Heavenly Court will not pass sentence on you; they will not apportion you a reward. Take what you will! Everything is yours.’
Bontzye looks up for the first time. He is dazzled; everything shines and flashes and streams with light.
‘Taki—really?’ he asks, shyly.
‘Yes, really!’ answers the presiding judge, with decision; ‘really, I tell you, everything is yours; everything in heaven belongs to you. Because all that shines and sparkles is only the reflection of your hidden goodness, a reflection of your soul. You only take of what is yours.’
‘Taki?’ asks Bontzye again, this time in a firmer voice.
‘Taki! taki! taki!’ they answer from all sides.
‘Well, if it is so’, Bontzye smiles, ‘I would like to have every day, for breakfast, a hot roll with fresh butter.’
The Court and the angels looked down, a little ashamed; the prosecutor laughed.
J. L. PERETZ, 1894.
(Trans. Helena Frank.)
THE WATCH ON THE JORDAN[36]
(ZIONIST HYMN)
LIKE the crash of the thunder
Which splitteth asunder
The flame of the cloud,
On our ears ever falling
A voice is heard calling
From Zion aloud.
‘Let your spirits’ desires
For the land of your sires
Eternally burn;
From the foe to deliver
Our own holy river,
To Jordan return.’
Where the soft-flowing stream
Murmurs low as in dream
There set we our watch!
Our watchword, ‘The sword
Of our land and our Lord’;
By Jordan then set we our watch.
Rest in peace, lovéd land,
For we rest not, but stand,
Off-shaken our sloth.
When the bolts of war rattle,
To shirk not the battle
We make thee our oath.
As we hope for a heaven,
Thy chains shall be riven,
Thine ensign unfurled.
And in pride of our race
We will fearlessly face
The might of the world.
When our trumpet is blown,
And our standard is flown,
Then set we our watch!
Our watchword, ‘The sword
Of our land and our Lord’;
By Jordan then set we our watch.
Yea, as long as there be
Birds in air, fish in sea,
And blood in our veins;
And the lions in might,
Leaping down from the height,
Shaking, roaring, their manes;
And the dew nightly laves,
The forgotten old graves
Where Judah’s sires sleep;
We swear, who are living,
To rest not in striving,
To pause not to weep.
Let the trumpet be blown,
Let the standard be flown,
Now set we our watch;
Our watchword, ‘The sword
Of our land and our Lord’;
In Jordan now set we our watch.
N. H. IMBER.
(Trans. I. Zangwill.)