The Maccabaean

(Translated from the Yiddish.)

I WAS born in Kopyl, a town of the government of Minsk, of no wealth or commercial importance, but blessed with the splendor of Nature—glorious woods, charming valleys and meadows. The day of my birth is not recorded, for such things were formerly not thought of among our people, especially in small towns. I have been told, simply, that I was born in the year 1836, and as for the precise day, my relations are agreed upon December 20 (the first eve of Chanuka). My father, Chaijim Mosheh, was, because of his learning and knowledge of the world, a man of consequence. The one-half of his time was devoted to God, that is, to study and the gratuitous teachings of others; and the other half he bestowed upon his own needs and those of the community, which he served faithfully. He had also the gift of address, and from time to time held learned disquisitions in the House of God. He wrote in a good Hebrew style, too, and his letters and essays are still in the possession of his friends. I was his darling, and so he afforded me an education which was unusual. When I was six years old and could already read, my father engaged a tutor to instruct me in the Holy Writ and the Targumim. My teacher fulfilled his task so signally for twelve hours each day that after three years I knew by heart the twenty-four books of the Bible, and I had imbibed their spirit fully. While I was still enthused with the divine words

of the Prophets and beheld with a spiritual eye the sacred visions of a world that had passed, my tutor led me into the domain of the Talmud, that hoary giant of the world's literature. When I entered there, I seemed like one who finds himself for the first time in a tremendous mart and is bewildered by the sight of myriad kinds of wares and by the dinning noises and shouts at every hand. Merchants and buyers, hucksters and higglers, press and pursue each other, eager for barter with question and answer; their eyes sparkle, they scuffle, they haggle—all with the greatest animation. With my vivid imagination, I lent body and life to all things which I met in the Talmud. The "Tanna Kamma," which, according to the tradition of the Gemara, was the first interpreter of a law, and the "Hai man deamar," the teacher of the law, who gave an authoritative decision in every question, appeared to me in the form of stately men, with countenances aflame with fervor. But the usual three alternatives in Exegesis, "Resha, Lefa, and Mezieta," seemed, on the contrary, like quarrelsome women, contradicting each other. The maiden, the virgin, and wife; the deaf-mute, the imbecile, and the minor (the three Talmudic categories of irresponsibles); the two who quarrel over a mantle, and the bull that gored a cow—in short, all the Talmudic illustrations for legal problems stood vividly before my eyes.

So I soon came to love the Talmud very