"Don't be shocked. It is all bosh." And he fell to swaying over his book
I was dumfounded. "Why do you keep reading Talmud, then?" I asked, looking aghast
"Because I am a fool," he returned, going on with his reading. A minute later he added, "But you are a bigger one."
I was hurt and horrified. I tried to argue, but he went on murmuring, his eyes on the folio before him
Finally I snapped: "You are a horrid atheist and a sinner in Israel. You are desecrating the holy place." And I rushed from the little synagogue
His shocking whisper, "Do you really think there is a God?" haunted me all that afternoon and evening. He appeared like another man to me. I was burning to see him again and to smash his atheism, to prove to him that there was a God. But as I made a mental rehearsal of my argument I realized that I had nothing clear or definite to put forth. So I cursed Naphtali for an apostate, registered a vow to shun him, and was looking forward to the following day when I should go to see him again
My interest in the matter was not keen, however, and soon it died down altogether. Nothing really interested me except the fact that I had not enough to eat, that mother was no more, that I was all alone in the world.
The shock of the catastrophe had produced a striking effect on me. My incessant broodings, and the corroding sense of my great irreparable loss and of my desolation had made a nerveless, listless wreck of me, a mere shadow of my former self. I was incapable of sustained thinking
My communions with God were quite rare now. Nor did He take as much interest in my studies as He used to. Instead of the Divine Presence shining down on me while I read, the face of my martyred mother would loom before me. Once or twice in my hungry rambles I visited Abner's Court and let my heart be racked by the sight of what had once been our home, mother's and mine. I said prayers for her three times a day with great devotion, with a deep yearning. But this piety was powerless to restore me to my former feeling for the Talmud
I distinctly recall how I would shut my eyes and vision my mother looking at me from her grave, her heart contracted with anguish and pity for her famished orphan. It was an excruciating vision, yet I found comfort in it. I would mutely complain of the world to her. It would give me satisfaction to denounce the whole town to her. "Ah, I have got you!" I seemed to say to the people of Antomir. "The ghost of my mother and the whole Other World see you in all your heartlessness. You can't wriggle out of it." This was my revenge. I reveled in it.