More about Max's educational experience in Bielsk. Much later in life Max encountered a veteran of the same Bielsk Podlaski cheder and the two compared notes.
LISA: Lisa, interviewing her grandfather, Max Did they teach you secular things as well as religious things at your grandmother's?
MAX: Max, interviewed by Lisa or talking with other family members Yeah, secular things, sure. The religious part it used to be automatic: A boy, he knew one thing. He's gotta daven every day. And every morning. And he gotta [make] tefillin every morning.
In very few words, Max described clearly the religious bedrock on which his secular life was anchored. He described his grandmother, presumably in this context, the one in Bielsk:
MAX: But my grandmother, she was a modern woman!
A tantalizing phrase: a modern woman. Would that Max had said more!
MAX: I started to cheat, you know. I didn't want to go... in the morning with the tefillin, you know what I mean? So she told me, she warned me that she's gonna tell my rebbe, snitch on me. And she did!
Did Max describe his grandmother as modern because she took the initiative and snitched on him? Or for some completely different reason? Or was this sarcasm, as he saw her as wholly traditional?
NARRATOR: Lisa, backgrounding/commenting. "Secular" in Max's education meant learning the mechanisms of survival within a Judaic context. Through parable and analogy the Talmud set down the moral and social rules by which Jews ran their lives. Considering the caliber of the education [to which Max was subjected] it's amazing that anything was learned at all.
A standard story? Cruel, arbitrary melamed, rebellious boy?
Even with a brief sampling of cheder experiences it is easy to reach this conclusion. And yet, this system existed, virtually unchanged, for a very long time. So it must have provided some practical value.
NARRATOR: Because Max clearly recalls the discipline actions of the melamed much more than what he learned, the implication is that this is what actually occurred. It is probably also true that it was simply more pleasurable for him to recite stories about himself as a naughty boy rather than about his studies. For Max to make light of such traditional religious practices as morning prayers is an indication of the changes Judaism was undergoing at the time. There was a breakdown of Jewish authority with the increasing intrusion of the secular world.
"Breakdown" may be a bit strong. Certainly Judaism was evolving at this time, in this place.
LISA: When you went to your grandmother's and got a higher education, were you still only with Jews?
MAX: Yeah, only with Jews. We were sixteen years old...
Max fast-forwarded to a much later date, an apparently random meeting in the U.S. in which he encountered another veteran of the Bielsk cheder.
MAX: And after I got married to Jennie, and after the kids came, we went to the mountains every summer, and once I came to Woodridge [Hotel], a big place. And after dinner we sat down to talk, to chew the rag, what you call. He got a hold of me, we start talking about where he comes from; so he told me he comes from Bielsk. So I say I was once upon in Bielsk, so I told him I went to Label the Melamed. You see, in the old country they didn't call him like Mr. Mrs., you know. They called him by his father's name, by his mother's name...
The two adults compared notes. Label the Melamed was not a pleasant memory for either.
MAX: I said to him "So I was in Wysokie, and I came over here, [to Bielsk], and I went to Label the Melamed."
And he said: "So, Label the Melamed? My rebbe?"
He was such a son-of-a-bitch, that one! For every little thing, what he said you [had to do], what you didn't have to do, what you shouldn't do, there was a punishment!... So everything, what you did, high or low, his pleasure was to whip the children. [And we got hit] with the same melamed! With the same whip! And this was maybe... twenty years later, and I met him there in the mountains, and came across a conversation, that he comes from the same town, and he went to the same rebbe! And melamed! So the results were the same!
IMAGE: Boy's cheder, Lublin, 1924
/4/ Elementary school
/5/ Teacher
/6/ Ivan Batnik Jewish Encyclopedia Katzenelson, Dr. L Ginsburg, Baron D., eds. (ca. 1904-05) p. 862
(Translated by Leonard Dudka)
/7/ A Brooklyn-based sect of the Hasidim, so named for the section of Russia from which they emigrated
IMAGE: Father leading son to cheder
IMAGE: Synagogue in Orla
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