Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [87]
Yehuda’s mind was always on the family. All but Bessie and Reuben had survived the war, but now he had to face the business of dissolving the family and scattering them forever.
For him and Sophie there would be no move. Palestine? Out of the question. Palestine was for young people. The matchmakers were chirping around to find suitable mates for his three girls, Rifka, Sarah, and Ida. They weren’t exactly raving beauties and the daughters of a shohet were not likely to catch a prince. Moreover, Rifka was too late for a really desirable marriage because of the war.
Yehuda hoped they would marry perhaps a carpenter, perhaps a leather worker, and if God smiled, a butcher, a merchant. For the daughters he did not worry so much, not that he wasn’t an affectionate and loving father. In his daily prayers he beseeched that at least one of them would remain in Wolkowysk and have children and maybe the pain in Sophie’s eyes might go away in time.
The fate of the boys disturbed him the most. The three oldest had all strayed from what he had envisioned for them. Yehuda couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud, but Mordechai was a bitter disappointment. By the time he was ready to graduate from yeshiva in Vilna, Mordechai had drifted away from the religious life his father had so carefully guided him into. Not exactly a rebellion, not exactly a rejection, but a definite decision not to go into the rabbinate. Mordechai had chosen instead to become a teacher and writer, of sorts.
Vilna was one of the heartland cities of the shtetl a little Warsaw abounding with Jewish heritage and culture. Mordechai was appointed to an instructor’s position in a secular gymnasium; he wrote a weekly column in one of the local newspapers and was otherwise immersed in the scholarly activities of Vilna’s Jewish community.
Vilna was particularly bad for the Jews these days. The city had been ceded by treaty to the Poles and this set off vicious fighting between Poland and Lithuania, with both armies exercising their ritual of murdering Jews who were blamed by both sides for their troubles.
The final realization of Mordechai’s independence came with letters that he was interested in a girl from an affluent but nonobservant family. What had it come to when a father could no longer arrange his child’s marriage?
Yehuda concluded that times had changed. Perhaps his efforts to have Mordechai remain a shtetl boy would come to nothing. So, what did it matter as long as his son was happy? If he would take a bride without Poppa’s personal stamp of approval the sun wouldn’t fall from the sky.
THERE WAS ANOTHER surprise in the Zadok family. Matthias, who had just turned seventeen, had been an enigma in the family—quiet, intense, the dreamer. He was also a different Zadok physically—taller, stronger, very steady and reliable. At the end of the war when Nathan failed to pick up the banner of Poale Zion, which was starting up chapters again all over the Pale, Matthias, to everyone’s surprise, became the Zionist of the family. He organized thirty young people in Wolkowysk and undertook the arduous task of raising funds, obtaining visas, and cutting through red tape which was essential for the trip to Palestine. It was Matthias who was now being asked to speak in the regional conferences and Matthias who was the delegate to the major congress in Warsaw.
One day when Yehuda and Sophie returned from the cemetery, Matthias was waiting for them. The boy dreaded those hours after their graveside visits but what was happening needed an immediate decision.
“Good shabbas, Poppa, Momma.”
“Good shabbas, Matti. I thought you were overnight at a meeting in Slonim. You didn’t travel home by train on the Sabbath?”
“Of course not. I got home last evening before sundown. I’m sorry I didn’t go to shul last night. There was an urgent meeting at Lufka’s house.”
“So tell me what’s on your mind before you jump