Torah

In Mary Antin's memoir, the Torah is not merely a religious text but the very foundation of Jewish existence in the Pale of Settlement. It is described as the "wall within the wall" — an inner fortress of religious integrity that the Czar, the priests, and the mob could not shake or destroy. This wall, built from the ruins of pillaged homes and cemented with the blood of murdered children, represents the spiritual defiance of a people otherwise powerless before the Russian state. The Torah is the balm for all wounds, the expression of spiritual cravings, and the source of the dream of restoration to Palestine that allowed the Jews to forget the world's cruelties.

The Torah as the Law of Daily Life

The Torah's authority extends beyond festivals and synagogue worship into the most mundane aspects of daily existence. As Mary explains, "How to eat, how to bathe, how to work—everything had been written down for us, and we strove to fulfil the Law." This comprehensive regulation of life meant that the study of the Torah was the most honored of all occupations, and those who engaged in it were the most revered of all men. The Law was not an abstract doctrine but a living guide, interpreted by a hierarchy of teachers: first Moses, then the great rabbis, and finally the Rav of Polotzk, who read all day in the sacred books so he could tell the people what to do whenever they were in doubt. When Mary's mother found something wrong with a chicken she had cut up, she sent the housemaid to the rav, who consulted his big books and declared the bird either kosher or trefah. If he called it trefah, Mary could not eat of it, "no, not if I had to starve." The rav's knowledge extended to journeys, business, marriage, and the purification of vessels for Passover, making him the ultimate arbiter of the Torah's demands.

The Education of Boys in the Torah

The Torah's most profound social impact was on the education of boys, who were sent to heder (Hebrew school) almost as soon as they could speak. No Jewish boy was allowed to grow up without at least a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew, and the scantiest income had to be divided to provide for the boys' tuition. To leave a boy without a teacher was a disgrace upon the whole family, extending to the remotest relative. For the children of the destitute, a free school supported by the charity of the pious ensured that even the poorest could learn. Mary's brother was five years old when he entered his studies, carried to the heder on the first day covered with a praying-shawl so that nothing unholy should look on him. He was presented with a bun on which were traced, in honey, the words: "The Torah left by Moses is the heritage of the children of Jacob." After entering heder, the boy became the hero of the family, served before the other children at table, and given shoes and hot soup even if the girls went barefoot and ate dry bread. The rebbe (teacher) would come on Sabbath afternoon to examine the boy in the hearing of the family, and if he read his portion well, he was given a great saucerful of preserves, praised, blessed, and made much of. This reverence for the Torah's study created a stark gender hierarchy, as Mary notes: "No wonder he said, in his morning prayer, 'I thank Thee, Lord, for not having created me a female.' It was not much to be a girl, you see. Girls could not be scholars and rabbonim."

The Spiritual Substance Behind the Forms

The Torah's power lay not in its external ceremonies but in the pure doctrine beneath them. Mary reflects that stripped of its "grotesque mask of forms, rites, and mediæval superstitions," the religion of the Pale was simply the belief that God was, had been, and ever would be, and that the children of Jacob were His chosen messengers to carry His Law to all the nations. Beneath the mountainous volumes of the Talmudists and commentators, the Mosaic tablets remained intact. Out of the mazes of the Cabala, the pure doctrine of ancient Judaism found its way to the hearts of the faithful. The Jew, retiring within his own soul, heard the voice of the God of Abraham, conscious that between himself and God no go-between was needed. This close relation to God was the source of the strength that sustained the Jew through all the trials of life in the Pale, and it was this identification with the cause of righteousness that produced the heroism with which the Jews met the battalions of tyrants. The flame of the burning bush that had dazzled Moses still lighted the gloomy prison of the Pale, and behind all the mummeries and ceremonials, the object of the Jew's adoration was the face of God.

The Torah's Contrast with American Freedom

The Torah's role in the Pale stands in stark contrast to the freedoms Mary's father sought in America. When he landed on American soil, almost his first act was his application for naturalization, and at the earliest moment allowed by law, he became a citizen of the United States. The boasted freedom of the New World meant to him far more than the right to reside, travel, and work wherever he pleased; it meant the freedom to speak his thoughts, to throw off the shackles of superstition, and to test his own fate, unhindered by political or religious tyranny. This freedom was the antithesis of the Torah's comprehensive regulation of life, which had bound him in "leading-strings" for most of his life. The Torah had been the Jews' only refuge in the Pale, but it was also a form of captivity, and America offered an escape from both the Czar's oppression and the rigid demands of the Law. Mary's own education in American schools, where she learned about the separation of church and state, represented a new kind of freedom — the freedom to choose one's own beliefs, a freedom the Torah's world had never allowed.