Lozhe the Rav

Lozhe the Rav, also called Reb' Lozhe, was the Rav of Polotzk, the town's supreme religious authority. In the world of the Pale of Settlement, where the Czar commanded all Jews to remain within a confined area, the Rav was the living bridge between the divine law and daily life. Mary Antin recalls that he read all day in the sacred books so that he could tell her, her parents, and her friends what to do whenever they were in doubt. His authority was absolute and practical: if her mother cut up a chicken and found some hurt or mark that should not be there, she sent the housemaid with it to the Rav, and Mary ran along to watch him consult his big books. Whatever he decided was right; if he called the chicken "trefah," she must not eat of it, not even if she had to starve. The Rav knew about everything—about going on a journey, about business, about marrying, about purifying vessels for Passover. He was the final interpreter of the Law that governed how to eat, how to bathe, how to work, and how to live, and his position placed him among the most revered of all men in a society where the study of the Torah was the most honored of all occupations.

The Interview and the Failed Opportunity

The most consequential episode involving Lozhe the Rav came when Mary's formal education in Russia had already collapsed. Her father's plans for a liberal education for his daughters had fallen to the ground due to the protracted illness of both parents, and the family was trampled by poverty. It was then that the Rav, hearing from various sources that Pinchus, son-in-law of Raphael the Russian, had two bright little girls whose talents were going to waste for want of training, became much interested and sent for the children to see for himself what the gossip was worth. Mary herself recalls nothing of this important interview, reporting the anecdote only on the authority of her parents. They told her how the Rav lifted her up on a table in front of him, asked her many questions, and encouraged her to ask questions in her turn. As a result of this interview, Reb' Lozhe concluded that she ought by all means to be put to school. There was no public school for girls in Polotzk, but a few pupils were maintained in a certain private school by irregular contributions from city funds. The Rav enlisted in her cause the influence of his son, who, by virtue of some municipal office he held, had a vote in fixing this appropriation. Although he pleaded eloquently for her admission as a city pupil, the Rav's son failed to win the consent of his colleagues, and Mary's one little crack of opportunity was tightly stopped. Her father does not remember on what technicality the application was dismissed; her mother is under the impression that it was plainly refused on account of her religion, the authorities being unwilling to appropriate money for the tuition of a Jewish child. The result was that Mary was left without teacher or book just when her mind was most active, left to think and think without direction.

The Rav's Daughter and the Signs of Change

Lozhe the Rav also figures in the narrative as a marker of the slow erosion of orthodox practice in Polotzk, even before the family's emigration. The breath of revolt against orthodox externals was beginning to reach the town from the greater world, notably from America. Sons whose parents had impoverished themselves by paying the fine for non-appearance for military duty sent home portraits of themselves with their faces shaved, and the grieved old fathers and mothers exhibited the significant portraits on their parlor tables. Within the town limits, young women of education were beginning to reject the wig after marriage. A notorious example was the beautiful daughter of Lozhe the Rav, who was not restrained by her father's conspicuous relation to Judaism from exhibiting her lovely black curls like a maiden. It was a further sign of the times that the Rav did not disown his daughter. This detail is crucial to understanding the Rav's character: despite his position as the supreme guardian of the Law, he did not publicly condemn his own child's defiance. His tolerance, or perhaps his helplessness before the changing world, helped shake Mary's own mother, who, already urged by her husband to leave her wig in Polotzk as a first step of progress, gave up the emblem of matrimonial chastity with but a passing struggle.

The Rav's Place in the Old World Order

The Rav's authority was part of a larger hierarchy of holy men who structured Jewish life in the Pale. He stood above the dayyan, who heard people's quarrels and settled them according to the Law so that they should not have to go to the Gentile courts, which were considered false. He was also distinguished from the shohat, who knew how cattle and fowls should be killed, and from the hazzan and other officers of the synagogue. The Rav's unique role was as the ultimate interpreter of the Law, the one who could decide whether a chicken was trefah or whether a vessel was pure for Passover. This system ensured that even the poorest man, if learned in the Law, was to be respected and set above other men. The Rav's failed intervention on Mary's behalf thus carries a deep irony: the very structure of religious authority that he embodied, and that defined the limits of Jewish life in the Pale, was the same structure that could not, or would not, extend its protection to a bright girl's secular education. His attempt to help her was a rare moment of a religious leader reaching beyond the traditional boundaries of learning, and its failure underscored the rigidity of the world he governed. The memory of the Rav lifting her onto a table and questioning her remained, even though Mary herself could not recall it, a testament passed down by her parents of the one moment when the highest authority in Polotzk recognized her potential and tried, however unsuccessfully, to give it a path forward.