In Those Days: The Story of an Old Man

by Judah Steinberg

Presently I heard the old man conclude his prayer: "When the world will be reclaimed through the kingship of the Almighty; when all mortals will acknowledge Thy name. . . . on that day the Lord will be One, and His name will be One!"

Out of the darkness came the devout words; they seemed to take wing, as though to pierce the shrouding mist and scatter it; but they themselves were finally dissolved in the triumph and blackness. . . .

I did not have to urge the old man to continue his tale. His prayers over, he picked up the thread of his narrative, as if something were driving him to give a full account of what he had passed through.—

The day I became acquainted with Jacob—continued the old man—I consider the beginning of a new period in my life. I became accustomed to consider him my superior, whose behavior had to be taken as an example. Jacob spoke as an authority whenever he did speak, and he never wavered in his decisions. Whenever he happened to be in doubt, his father would "instruct" him in his dreams. Thus we lived according to Jacob's decisions and dreams. I got used to eating forbidden food, to breaking the Sabbath, and trespassing against all the ordinances of the ritual without compunction. And yet Jacob used to preach to us, to bear floggings and all kinds of punishments rather than turn traitor to our faith. So I got the notion that our faith is neither prayers, nor a collection of ordinances of varying importance, but something I could not name, nor point to with my finger. Jacob, I thought, certainly knows all about it; but I do not. All I could was to feel it; so could Anna. Otherwise she would not have called me Zhid, and would not have hated me so much, in spite of seeing me break all the ordinances of the Jewish ritual.

At times I thought that I and my comrades were captains in God's army, that all His ordinances were not meant for us, but for the plain soldiers of the line. They, the rank and file, must be subjected to discipline, must know how to submit to authority; all of which does not apply to the commanding officers. It seemed to me that this was what the Holy One, blessed be He, had deigned to reveal to us through the dreams of Jacob: there is another religion for you, the elect. You will surely know what is forbidden, and what is permitted. . . .

Sometimes, again, I imagined that I might best prove true to my faith if I set my heart against the temptation that Satan had put before me in the person of Marusya. If I turned away from her, I thought, I might at once gain my share in the future world. So I armed myself against Marusya's influence in every possible way. I firmly resolved to throw back at her any food she might offer me. If she laid her hand on me, I would push it away from me, and tell her plainly that I was a Jew, and she—a nobody.

So I fought with her shadow, and, indeed, got the best of it as long as she herself was away. But the moment she appeared, all my weapons became useless. She made me feel like one drunk. I could not withstand the wild-fire of her eye, nor the charm of her merry talk, nor the wonderful attraction of her whole person. At the same time there was not a trace of deviltry about her: it was simply an attraction which I could not resist. And when she laid her soft hand on me, I bent under it, and gave myself up entirely. And she did what she wanted: where buttons were missing, she sewed them on; and where a patch was needed, she put it in. She was a little mother to me. She used to bring me all kinds of delicacies and order me to eat them; and I could not disobey her. In short, she made me forget Jacob and his teachings. But the moment I met Jacob I forgot Marusya's charms, and reminded myself that it was sinful to accept favors in exile. Then I would repent of my past actions from the very depths of my heart—till I again was face to face with Marusya. I was between the hammer and the anvil.

My meetings with Jacob were regular and frequent. After what according to Jacob's calendar was the Ninth of Av, we met nightly in the valley on Peter's estate, till a disagreement broke out among us. I would not permit the cattle of the whole neighborhood to browse on the estate of my patron, and Simeon and Reuben would not agree to let my patron's horses be brought to the meadows of their patrons. Our congregation nearly broke up. But here Jacob intervened with his expert decision.

"Boys," said he, "you must know that 'going out for the night' is really a form of stealing. True, we do not steal for our own benefit. Yet, as long as we have a hand in it, we must manage it in a fair way. So let us figure out how many horses every one of our patrons possesses. And let us arrange the nights according to the number of horses each of the patrons has. According to this calculation we shall change places. We shall spend more nights in the meadows of those who have more horses. That will make 'fair stealing.'"

The plan of Jacob was accepted, not as a proposition, but as an order. Since that time we began to "steal with justice." And our patrons slept peacefully, delighted with their unpunished thievery, till a Gentile boy, one Serge Ivanovich, joined us on one of his own "nights." He was the son of the village elder, and a cousin of Peter Khlopov. He was compelled to obey Jacob, but the next morning he blabbed about it all over the village.