Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
“Every valley shall be exalted,
And every mountain and hill shall be made low,
And the crooked shall be made straight,
And the rough places plain.
“And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together.”
Undisturbed by the swaying and chanting of teacher and pupils, old Kakah, our speckled hen, with her brood of chicks, strutted and pecked at the potato-peelings which fell from my mother’s lap, as she prepared our noon meal.
I stood at the window watching the road, lest the Cossack come upon us unawares to enforce the ukaz of the Czar, which would tear the bread from our mouths: “No Chadir [Hebrew school] shall be held in a room used for cooking and sleeping.”
With one eye I watched ravenously my mother cutting chunks of black bread. At last the potatoes were ready. She poured them out of the iron pot into a wooden bowl and placed them in the center of the table.