I stole a look at Yosef, my younger brother. Nothing that was sensible ever laid in his head to do; but if there was anything wild, up in the air that willed itself in him, he could break through stone walls to get it. Yosef gave a look around the house. Everything was old and poor, and not a thing to get money on—nothing except father’s Saifer Torah—the Holy Scrolls—and mother’s silver candlesticks, her wedding present from our grandmother.
“Why not sell the Saifer Torah and the candlesticks?” said Yosef.
Nobody but my brother would have dared to breathe such a thing.
“What? A Jew sell the Saifer Torah or the Sabbath candlesticks?” My father fixed on us his burning eyes like flaming wells. His hands tightened over his heart. He couldn’t speak. He just looked on the Saifer Torah, and then on us with a look that burned like live coals on our naked bodies. “What?” he gasped. “Should I sell my life, my soul from generation and generation? Sell my Saifer Torah? Not if the world goes under!”
There was a stillness of thunder about to break. Everybody heard everybody’s heart beating.
“Did I live to see this black day?” moaned my father, choking from quick breathing. “Mine own son, mine Kadish—mine Kadish tells me to sell the Holy Book that our forefathers shed rivers of blood to hand down to us.”
“What are you taking it so terrible?” said my brother. “Doesn’t it stand in the Talmud that to help marry his daughter a man may sell the holiest thing—even the Holy Book?”
“Are there miracles in America? Can she yet get there a man at her age and without a dowry?”
“If Hanneh Hayyeh, who is older than Sara Reisel and not half as good-looking,” said my brother, “could get a boss from a factory, then whom cannot Sara Reisel pick out? And with her luck all of us will be lifted over to America.”
My father did not answer. I waited, but still he did not answer.