A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden
520
A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden
520Hardcover
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Overview
Frieden's story provides a window onto Jewish life in an era that saw the encroachment of modern ideas into a traditional society, great streams of migration, and the project of Jewish nation building in Palestine. The memoir follows Frieden's student life in the yeshivas of Eastern Europe, the practices of peddlers in the American South, and the complexities of British policy in Palestine between the two World Wars. This first-hand account calls attention to some often ignored aspects of the modern Jewish experience and provides invaluable insight into the history of the time.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780804783637 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Publication date: | 05/08/2013 |
| Series: | Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture |
| Pages: | 520 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Jewish Life on Three Continents
The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden
By LEE SHAI WEISSBACH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2013Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-8363-7
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Menachem Mendel Frieden's Apologia
I approach the writing of my memoir because of an inner impulse to record all that is preserved in my memory about the life of my family and about my own life, which encompasses the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. I do not pretend to provide new insights concerning Jewish life in general during this period. Much has already been written about the Lithuanian Diaspora by Jewish authors in the past and they have written very well. I am interested mainly in the life of my own family. To the extent that I am able, I wish to leave for members of the family in future generations an accurate portrait of the life of the family in the past and to spare them the despair that overtakes me as I come to write about the past, on account of the lack of any details about the earlier generations of our family. I recall how, when I was still in my childhood, I used to leaf through the empty pages of my father's books, the first pages in the binding; perhaps I'd find some notation about early members of the family. And I recall my disappointment at finding all the pages blank.
Occasionally, I would turn to my parents, asking them to tell me something about their past. They would put me off with a question: "What does it matter to you?" I would listen in on the intimate evening conversations between my grandmother and my mother as they spoke about the past and about life in olden times. These have been preserved in my memory—things I learned in childhood—meager bits of information, it is true, but they can form a sort of initial foundation for my work, if I am at all able to dredge up from murky oblivion that which my eyes observed and my ears heard during my childhood and adolescence; if I am able to make known their correct meaning and to be capable of describing the nature of that life from a time now distant.
How pleased I would have been had earlier members of the family thought to record their memoirs as a keepsake for future generations. How important this is for one who is inclined to wonder about the family's past. May future generations not come to fault me in this regard. Every generation makes its demands. There was a time long ago when the generations thought about the future. Evidence of this comes from the ancient sites that have been discovered over the last century, ancient sites and hiding places in caves. And even before them, hiding places and antiquities were discovered. It is the nature of man to be concerned that his memory will never be forgotten; our sages have said that the first human being wrote a book of memoirs: Sifra dAdam Kadmoni.
A second reason for this impulse is to give coming generations of my family an opportunity to learn from my mistakes so that they can avoid making them. I have made many mistakes in my life, due either to lack of knowledge or lack of experience, mistakes of my youth, of my middle years, and also mistakes of my old age. Indeed, "there is no righteous man in the land who has not sinned," and sin is almost always a result of error or loss of sanity; these are synonymous. My hope is that those who read my words will benefit from them and find them useful, and this will be my reward.
This, and more. The course of my life has passed through three continents: Russia, North America, and the Land of Israel. Each land has its own customs and lifestyle; each country its own culture and laws, and whether we like it or not, we are influenced by the variations from place to place, whether we realize it or not. In this memoir, if I am able, I would like to give an accounting to myself, to summarize everything, to the extent that my memory will serve me as I stand at the threshold of old age. May my memory not fail me. May the calmed psyche of old age not induce me to brighten up the past with the lantern of the present; may I succeed in bringing to life that which I experienced and perhaps also the personal emotions that always accompany events. The late Dr. Shmaryahu Levin once said: "Feelings are what build bridges between thoughts and actions." And if this is so, then past events can't be accurately described without remembering the feelings that influenced them. I have at hand no notes, either my own or those of someone else. Although I always thought about keeping a diary, I never did. And how sorry about that I am now.
In the year 1923, two years after I made aliya to the Land of Israel and after I left the cigarette business with my hands in the air, when I had to decide if I should return to the United States or remain in the country and try my hand at an office job, in a dejected mood and finding it difficult to answer this fateful question, I found consolation in the determination to delay a decision for a while and I devoted myself to reading. And through that, I started occasional writing about this and that. And then the thought came to me to begin writing a memoir concerning the family and my life. I began with fragmentary notes, since I was immediately held back by a lack of proper material. But I continued to write, and that is the kernel of this present work.
The writing of memoirs for the sake of future generations, whether for individual readers or the general public, is an ancient practice. One thousand three hundred years before the Common Era, Amhut I composed a poem to teach his son and heir the lessons of his life experience and in it he describes his failures and his mistakes. And there were many others like him in ancient times; what are Solomon's Book of Proverbs, and the Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes? And great Torah scholars and rabbis have written books dealing with faith that they have dedicated to their sons: the Rambam, the Ramban, the Shlah, and many others.
As I began this work in earnest, a doubt crept into my heart: will I be successful? Is not my desire greater than my ability? After all, I have to go back over a period of more than seventy years, a period during which tremendous changes transpired in the life of our people in general and in my life in particular, and I have no notes! How difficult it will be to penetrate the darkness of the past and to bring to life the portrait of an individual during a period so long and so full of upheavals. The deeper I look into and penetrate the darkness of the past, the more perplexed I become and the more I struggle with the question: Is it worth it? Is it worth the cost, if one can speak of cost in this matter, the cost in energy, in peace of mind, and in time, time that is so valuable to a person who has reached old age? It seems to me that it may be more worthwhile to spend the time on Torah study and prayer. What frightens me most is that I might fail to portray the past accurately and honestly, due to the influence of changing times, on one hand, and because of my own ego, which may prevent me from presenting the negative side of things. "A person cannot represent himself as wicked," said our sages. I'll attempt to overcome my evil inclination and I won't avoid answering for my mistakes, for otherwise none of this effort is worthwhile. The "truth" will always remain the truth.
Although I began writing my memoir in 1923, I actually wrote very little, because already in September of that year I found office work that was important and very worthwhile in terms of the upbuilding of the Land of Israel. I gave this job my all and I was successful at it. It was with an institution that provided a strong foundation and a cornerstone for the early growth of the Yishuv. I remained in this job for twenty two years, until 1944, when I was assailed by serious heart disease and I had to give up my work and retire on a pension. And then, after I had gotten a little rest, I returned to this text with an inner peace and a spiritual joy that I derived from the creation of the state, a great attainment toward which I had devoted the best years and greatest energies of my life. I wrote primarily during my stay in the company of my family in the United States during 1947.
The first two chapters are devoted to "grandparents" and "parents." In these chapters, the details are few, for, to my sorrow, I had no information about them at hand, except for what I saw and heard tell, and that is not much. I brought together what I knew in order to make a start, a source from which to begin, even if it is a rather dry source, a shaky peg on which I must hang the beginning, for it's not really possible to start with myself, as though I were a child without a name, a shtoki, in the terminology of the sages. Besides, I hold dear the commandment "Honor your father and mother," and all the more so when my forbearers were honest, hardworking people. Legend tells us that the father of Rashi, the incomparable Torah commentator, was a scholar of limited ability compared to the greats of France at the time, and yet when Rashi began his Torah commentary with Genesis he commenced with the words, "Thus said Rabbi Yitzhak," who was his father.
Most of this account revolves around me, for I'm writing my memoir and not that of someone else. These are the things that interest me, that I wish to go over, and that will be of interest to those who come after me. These writings will describe my childhood, maturation, middle years, and old age. Normally, old age can't be very exciting and can't hold much interest for later generations, for these years are few, without much change or reward. Not so my older years, during which I'm working on writing, for these are the years of the creation of the state and the revival of the nation, the years of the ingathering of the exiles, the years of the War of Independence and of the war for survival that is continuing still. One who has been privileged to live during these years, to witness at close range what is happening day by day in our young state, is participating in her joy—a joy of creativity and building—and is feeling her pain, the birth pangs of a new state surrounded by enemies on all sides and forced to invest her greatest energies in security, in addition to shouldering her great burden of the ingathering of the exiles, a phenomenon like none other that has ever transpired in world history. That person records his principal impressions in the form of summaries of daily events as they unfold. It is impossible that these writings will not have the power to interest those who come after him, to know how he felt in his heart, the heart of one of the family, one who laid the foundations for the family in the Land of Israel and gave his all for this goal. It's just not possible. So I hope. This is a kind of "recording" for the family, if you will, so that I will not be forgotten.
CHAPTER 2
My Father's Family
Editor's Introduction
As he indicates in his Apologia, Frieden begins his memoir with an account of his parents' family background. He starts in this way in order to set the stage for the story of his own life, but in doing so he also begins to provide insights into some of the factors that influenced the lives of a great many East European Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For example, what Frieden writes about his own family begins to illustrate the way in which nineteenth-century Jews in the Russian empire lived in a society that was largely isolated from the mainstream population around them. Frieden's memoir reflects the fact that the Jews of the empire had business dealings with gentiles and interacted with Russian government institutions, but that most of them, especially those living in rural areas, sought to separate themselves from what seemed to them to be the rather unattractive social and cultural milieu of East European peasants. Jews followed their own religious and cultural traditions, they recognized their own social hierarchies, and they developed their own institutions.
This first chapter of Frieden's memoir also makes clear the importance of the heder, the typical early learning environment of most East European Jewish boys, and it suggests some of the specific kinds of economic pursuits taken up by East European Jewish householders. Likewise, this chapter points to the importance of kin connections in East European Jewish society and it reveals some of the discrimination East European Jews encountered. It alludes, for instance, to Russian government decrees that restricted the residence of Jews to certain geographic areas and that limited the access of Jews to higher education.
In this opening chapter, Frieden briefly follows the stories of some of his uncles' families for several generations and in doing so he provides an indication of the development of a Lithuanian Jewish Diaspora in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like some members of Frieden's own family, many other Lithuanian Jews also moved to North America, to South Africa, or to the Land of Israel, as well as to other parts of the Russian empire or, later, the Soviet Union. So too, like some of Frieden's kin, many were lost in the Shoah, the genocidal mass murder of Jews carried out by the Nazis during World War II.
Also appearing in this first chapter are some indications of what Frieden's own life holds in store and of the kinds of issues with which he will be concerned in later chapters. For example, this chapter previews Frieden's connection with the world of Hasidism, that variety of Orthodox Judaism that was characterized by religious fervor influenced by the mysticism of the Kabbalah and dependent upon the leadership of charismatic rabbis often given the title rebbe. Hasidism was created in the eighteenth century and, in the years that followed, a number of Hasidic dynasties developed in Eastern Europe, each with its own following. As this chapter reveals, many members of Frieden's family were attracted to Hasidism, but they were not all devotees of the same rebbe. This first chapter also alludes to the connection of Frieden's family with Norfolk, Virginia, and with the Land of Israel, places that will feature prominently in Frieden's own life story.
Finally, this chapter begins to disclose something about Frieden's character and psyche. We can sense his connection to family and his pride in Lithuanian Jewry. And this opening chapter also begins to reveal Frieden's general approach to the writing of his memoir. For one thing, it reflects his fondness for quoting classic Jewish sources such as the Bible and Talmud in order to reinforce what he has to say and it contains some early examples of the manner in which Frieden assumes a certain level of Jewish literacy on the part of those who might encounter his reminiscences, losing sight of the fact that the future generations for whom he was writing might not be so familiar with his references.
* * *
I DO NOT HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE of the early generations of my father's family because by the time I decided to write my memoir, there was no one left from whom to get detailed information. I only know that the name of my great-grandfather was Shalom and his family name was Milner. It is likely, judging by the family name, that he was the owner of a flour mill someplace in Lithuania. The name of my grandfather, my father's father, was Yom Tov Lipmann. It is believed that most families that use the name Yom Tov Lipmann are related to the author of the Tosefot Tom Tov. The name of my grandmother, my father's mother, was Marisha. I can see both of them before my eyes. Grandfather was a tall man with a slim, erect body, a light complexion and a long, long beard. Grey hair crowned his head and deep brown eyes were set deep within his face. Whenever he was seated, his hand supported his chin or his cheek. I don't remember ever seeing him with a smile on his face. There was always a hidden sadness crossing his troubled countenance, although I can't imagine that there was anything specific on which this sadness was based. Grandmother was a small woman, plump and round, with a full, cheerful face and laughing eyes. She was always busy and full of energy and she was wonderfully good-natured. She loved her grandchildren with all her soul. That's what our grandmother was like on our father's side. They had five sons: Shalom, Avraham, Mendel, Zalman, and Chaim. They had no daughters.
At the time from which I remember them, they lived in a village called Zbishok, not far from a town called Rakishok, in the Kovno province of Lithuania. Their business was a small store that supplied all kinds of things to the villagers and an inn (a kretshme in the local tongue), along the lines of what many village Jews did in those days. They could depend on making a living, but not on attaining wealth. Only a few other Jews lived in their village and in the vicinity, and on the Sabbath and on holidays they would all gather at Grandfather's house to pray. A special room with a Torah scroll and some books was set aside for this purpose; a sort of small-scale synagogue. It contained a reader's stand, an ark, and a table for the reading of the Torah. His son Zalman was the Torah reader even when he was still a youngster.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Jewish Life on Three Continents by LEE SHAI WEISSBACH. Copyright © 2013 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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