The Sound of Learning
The year was 1915. The school town was a small place, typically described as a shtetl. It would have remained obscure save for its yeshi've which attracted future scholars from all over the world. No formal examinations, no problems of admission. Everybody who wanted to learn God's word was welcome.
If this influx of students created difficulties in matters of room and board, no one worried about it. The greater the difficulties, the better. Suffering and learning were viewed as going hand in hand, each enhancing the value of the other. Learning accompanied by suffering was regarded of greater merit and, eventually, in the heavenly Kingdom, of greater reward.
The great endeavor of learning went on all day and practically all night long. The students of the yeshi've filled the air with the sound of learning during the day; in the evening the town's men assembled in synagogues and adjacent study houses and carried forward the unending commitment to learning.
There were dozens of informal study groups: some followed a daily portion of the Mish'ne, the collection of the Oral Law which is the basis of the Talmud; others studied daily a page or two of the Gemo're, which interprets and discusses the Law; still others recited daily consecutive chapters of the Psalms. A number of these learners stayed later, until the special midnight recitations and meditations about man's relation to God and the covenant between them. A few joined those students in the yeshi've who learned through the night.
All this studying was aloud, in a characteristic sing-song. Talmudic quotations were constantly brought into sharp focus, to negate and supersede other quotations and premises. The sound of debating learners in one synagogue or study house mingled with the argumentative voices of learners in another study house. In the midst of all these voices would sometimes be heard the imploring recitative of the Psalm-sayers. All this was part of a national concert, a people's intoxication with religious learning and worship.
The Tradition of "Eating Days"
There was a centuries-old Jewish tradition in Eastern Europe, especially in towns with yeshi'ves, to feed poor religious students. Such students received, during the years of their studies, three free meals a day, each day of the week with a different family. This tradition was called in Yiddish esn teg ("to eat days").
Families considered it a meritorious act in the service of God. Some families, unable to give a full "day," gave only the dinner meal. Poor families cooked community-supplied food in their own homes, and needy students received their meals there.
Many students could not secure all seven "days" for the entire week and suffered great hardships. Some went without "days"—that is, without food—a good part of the week. For many of them, the years of study in the yeshi've between boyhood and early manhood were years of privation, which often left a permanent mark on their physical health.
Several yeshi'ves abolished the method of assigning students for daily meals to different homes, and through fund-raising—locally, nationally and in faraway lands—directly maintained those students who could not support themselves. But the great majority of the yeshi'ves most probably could not have existed without the practice of "eating days." It was an institution deeply rooted in folk mentality, dictated by the economics of Jewish life and the general attitude toward religious learning.
The custom of "eating days" enabled whole generations of young men to study the Torah and the Talmud, and it gave the people, rich and poor alike, an opportunity to share in the furthering of Jewish learning and the continuation of God's word on earth.
To some families it was an act of charity, but charity in its most humane aspect—in one's very own home, at one's very own table. To some it represented a sacrifice but gladly and joyfully accepted.
The institution of "eating days" was maintained, not by a wealthy few, but by the masses themselves who, week in and week out, for years and generations, literally shared their daily bread for the purpose of preserving everlastingly the tradition of religious learning, a tradition considered the highest task and mission in life.
Suddenly: an Exiled Child, a Little Beggar . . .
The custom of "eating days" had been instituted for poor young men. But it was fated that I, a frail and tiny child, yet to round out, within another year, the first decade of my life, should be made a beneficiary of this institution. This was done notwithstanding the fact that I was not yet to study in the yeshi've proper, but in its preparatory school. Two factors apparently contributed to such a solution: I was a yo'sem—my father had died several years before—and I was considered a very gifted child. People who took it upon themselves to serve as Mother's advisors—out of the presumed goodness of their hearts and possibly out of a sense of religious duty—suggested to her the idea of my "higher" education far away from home. But in judging my supposed intelligence, they misjudged my pain-stained heart.
Esther, who suddenly, from one day to the next, replaced Mother as guardian of my life and fate, hastily arranged with seven different families to provide me, in their homes, with my three daily meals. That is, each day of the week—the same day—I would eat with a different family.
In similar haste Esther contracted with a very poor widow to provide me with lodging.
The house where I roomed the first night after my arrival in the new town and throughout my stay there was a one-story building—two apartments and a garret.
One part of the garret was converted into a misnamed third apartment: only one room had two small tilted windows cut into the roof and this room had several pieces of barren old furniture. An adjacent cubicle served as a kitchen, and a dark, windowless room, with the sloping walls crowding what little air there was, served as the bedroom of the widow and her daughter.
So desperate was the widow's plight, that she rented out this "bedroom" to two adult students of the yeshi've, and a little corner, with a small bed, for the newcomer. The widow and her daughter slept between the furniture pieces in the middle room, on the floor. A thick curtain separated the two "rooms."
All the benefactors of my seven "days" undoubtedly meant well, and indeed honored me by sharing their meals with me one day every week for about two years.
But no matter how well-intentioned these "days" were, I could not compare, in my mind and heart, three meals a day at the table of strangers, every day at a different table, and the meals at home. The simplest meal in my own home—plain dry bread with tea—would have been heavenly fare.
And so, as if in the blink of an eye, I suddenly felt for no particular fault of mine, like an exiled child and little beggar . . .