My knowledge up to my eighth year consisted chiefly of the Pentateuch with commentary, the Prophets, and other Biblical stories, besides Hungarian and German, reading and writing. I felt quite at home in the five books of Moses, and in the Prophets I was sufficiently versed to recite and translate long passages from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Treassar, and other Holy Scriptures. These accomplishments gave me a certain standing among my schoolfellows, and the teacher used to bring me forward as a kind of specimen of his teaching; for whenever a father came to the school to introduce his promising offspring, I was called up and examined to prove by my answers the zeal and skill of the teacher.
To be thus gazed at in one's youth has its dangers, for it is apt to make one somewhat vain, and it might easily have grown into self-conceit if my mother's warning words had not from time to time acted like a shower-bath on the fire of my youthful imagination. "Thou art nothing yet, thou knowest nothing yet," said she; "the son of my first husband must be the first of all the boys." And what my mother meant by the first was not confined to the Jewish schools at Duna Szerdahely. For she intended me to excel not only in Jewish but also in Christian learning. Devout and God-fearing though she was, she seems soon to have come to the conclusion that the study of Thora and Talmud may be all very well to open the gates of Paradise, but that they are of little use to help one on in the world, and that under the altered conditions of the time the disposition which reduced my father to beggary would be of still less use to me. In short, my mother had made up her mind that I was to relinquish the study of Jewish religion and direct my attention to a worldly career, and that the son of the Rabbi and Talmudist was to become a universal scholar. The boldness of this plan can only be fully appreciated by those who have known some of the aspirations of the life, the ways of thinking, and the horrible fanaticism of the Jews of those days.
In my youth the Jewish community of Duna Szerdahely had the reputation of being the most devout, the most zealous congregation of Hungary, in no wise tinged with doctrinal innovations; the most devout of all Europe, in fact, with the exception of a few Russian and Polish communities, celebrated for their Chasidendon, or zeal. It was a piece of pure unalloyed mediæval conceit, with all its wildly fanatical fancies and impossibilities; a pure counterfeit of that religious life the dark shadow of which in my after life, during my sojourn with the Moslems of Bokhara, has filled me with horror. In this superabundance of religious enthusiasm, in this frightful labyrinth of ritualistic cavilling and grievous superstition, I spent my childhood. Summer and winter, early in the morning and late at night, I never neglected at the first sound of the wooden hammer on the door—this replaced the bell which calls the Jews to worship—to speed towards the synagogue, where my strong young voice at a very early age was heard above all the worshippers, and stamped me as a boy of marked Divine favour.
I would rather have died of hunger than have taken a mouthful of food which had not been prepared according to the established ritual, or than partake of meat or milk food without observing the necessary interval of six hours, or, worst of all, than incur pollution by contact with that most monstrous of all creatures—the swine! For fear of baring my head I wore my cap right down over my ears, and when some mischievous Christian lads once forcibly took it from me, I trembled all over like an aspen leaf, and imagined that I should straightway be committed to the awful tortures of the Gehenna. In order not to have to say the word Kreutz (cross), I always said Schmeitzer instead of Kreutzer. When I passed a crucifix I always turned my head the other way, and murmured words of disgust, or secretly spat on the ground. If by chance on Saturday, the day of absolute rest, I found a copper or silver coin on the ground, I pushed it along with my foot (as it was a sin to touch it with my hand), and in holy dread covered it up with dust and dirt, so that I might find it again next day. A religion which has to instruct its confessors in these minutest details, which prescribes how he must eat, drink, walk, stand, sleep, dress, cleanse his body outwardly and inwardly; how to associate with women and how to comport himself during different natural occurrences—such a religion necessarily exercises a profound influence upon the youthful mind, it absorbs him entirely, it captivates his senses and his thoughts. I found exactly the same thing in after years among the Moslem youths of Turkey and Persia. There, as here, faith really manifests itself merely in outward appearances, in a ritual which is observed with the greatest exactitude, and it is therefore not surprising that the young Jew, like the Moslem, when in after years he begins to inquire into things for himself, breaks the fetters and becomes a freethinker. This total revolution of ideas may be explained as the natural result when two such widely different elements come into contact with each other.
The transformation necessarily depends to a great extent upon the natural tendencies of the individual. As long as I attended the Jewish school, and all contact with the Christian world was prohibited, there could of course be no question of scepticism with me. It was really my mother who gave the initiative; for, as already mentioned, she meant me to have a secular education. Regardless of the harsh criticism of our fellow-believers, she removed me from the Jewish school, and placed me in the elementary school maintained by the Protestant community. Here I was taught from Christian books, attended the catechising, and received such elementary notions of geography and natural history as the extremely primitive school-books then in use in Hungary were able to furnish. The description of the earth was contained in a little book in verse, called "Kis tükör," or "Small Mirror." Natural history was limited to the description of a few animals, and instead of the Hungarian mother-tongue we were initiated into the elements of Latin. It was, to say the best of it, very meagre fare which Christian culture vouchsafed to me, but it was so totally different from my former studies, which dealt only with events that happened thousands of years ago, that even these scanty morsels convinced me of the greater sustaining power and interest of the intellectual food here offered. The intercourse with Christian companions of my own age also made me freer and less prejudiced, for I played with them and made friends, without, however, entering their houses or touching the food and cakes they offered. This, both my mother and I felt, would be rank apostasy, and would be going a little too far for the only son of the former rabbi! But the ice was broken. True, I had not yet dared to climb over the wall of partition which, on account of my bringing up, separated me from the outer world, but I began to cast furtive glances over to the other side, and when my mother, little by little, made me familiar with the idea of following a secular career and becoming a doctor, the thick clouds of orthodox religious views soon dispersed, the horizon widened, and with ecstasy my childish eye roamed over those distant regions of delight.
I may have been about ten years old then. My plans for the future were made, but the means to carry them out cost my dear mother unspeakable anxiety. The poverty and misery of the family had now reached a climax. My elder sister had already gone to service, and in order that I might not take the bread out of the children's mouths my mother made up her mind, though with a heavy heart, to send me also out of the house. I went as apprentice to a lady tailoress, whose son I instructed in the Hebrew language, in return for which she boarded me and initiated me in the mysteries of sewing together light cotton and linen materials.
The three hours which I spent in the fulfilment of my pedagogic duties were pleasant enough. It flattered my vanity to teach a boy of my own age, but all the more disagreeable was the time which I had to spend sitting at the round table among my companions and the more advanced pupils in the tailor's trade. Here I had always to bear mocking remarks about my clumsiness; they were always finding fault with me, and often gave me palpable instruction how to hold my needle and thimble, how not to crush the stuff unnecessarily, and so on. In short, the initiation into the noble art of tailoring was embittered for me to such an extent that after the first month had elapsed I complained to my mother with tears. She realised the mistake she had made, and encouraged me to hold out at least until the winter was past and she should have secured a good appointment for me. It cost me much to consent, but my mother's admonitions and the consciousness that during the bitter winter weather I should at least have a warm room and tolerable food, whereas I used to have to go all the way to school scantily dressed and with a few warm potatoes in my pocket for breakfast, conquered at last. I became reconciled to my disagreeable lot, until with the awakening of the spring the hope of improving my condition also awoke in me, and glimmers of future possibilities rose before my mind's eye.
I had now reached my eleventh year, and made up my mind to leave not only my home, but also the town in which my mother, the only being who cared for me, lived.
To set out into the world at eleven years of age, in poverty and misery, with a crutch as companion, away from a mother's loving sympathy, henceforth to wander among strangers, and to be subject to their cold gaze, surely this is a cruel trial and hard to bear for a young, sensitive child. The thought of it frightened me; it weighed me down and forced tears from my eyes—tears which flowed the more abundantly when I saw by my mother's red eyes that she also struggled in vain to keep them down.
But what was to be done? In my dire distress and utter helplessness there seemed no other way open to reach that goal to which my natural propensities appeared to point. My mother encouraged me by saying, "Thou canst not and darest not be an ordinary man. The spirit of thy learned father is in thee. Thou must study and become a doctor; and in order to commence thy studies at the college of St. Georghen, where thy name is known and they will take an interest in thee, thou must earn a few florins first, for I can give thee at best only a change of linen and a suit of clothes for the journey. Yes, my child, thou wilt have much to bear, many hardships to suffer, but mark what I say—we must not mind the trouble. During the first part of the night we must prepare the bed on which to stretch ourselves during the latter part."