Raphael

Raphael, known throughout Polotzk as "the Russian," stands at the head of Mary Antin's maternal line as the architect of the family's solid position in the town. He is introduced in the memoir not as a distant ancestor but as a vivid, formative presence whose rise from orphaned poverty to prosperous storekeeping gave his descendants the comforts and standing that defined their childhood. His story, told through the recollections of his daughter Hannah Hayye, is one of shrewdness, piety, and a carefully guarded orthodoxy—a man who built a fortune within the narrow confines of the Pale of Settlement and then used it to secure the futures of his children in the only ways his world allowed.

Origins and Rise to Prosperity

Raphael's beginnings were humble and unpromising. Left an orphan at an early age, he was brought up by an elder brother in a village not far from Polotzk. The brother dutifully sent him to heder, the traditional Hebrew school, and at an early age betrothed him to Deborah, the daughter of Solomon, a dealer in grain and cattle. Deborah was not yet in her teens at the time of the betrothal, and so foolish was she that she was afraid of her affianced husband. One day, coming from the store with a bottle of liquid yeast, she suddenly came face to face with her betrothed, which gave her such a fright that she dropped the bottle, spilling the yeast on her pretty dress, and ran home crying all the way. At thirteen she was married, which had a good effect on her deportment, and the memoir records no more of her running away from her husband.

The young couple's fortunes took an unexpected turn through the unconventional behavior of Deborah's sister, Hode. Having married a fiddler who travelled constantly, playing at hotels and inns all through "far Russia," and having no children, Hode ought to have spent her days in fasting and praying and lamenting. Instead, she accompanied her husband on his travels and even had a heart to enjoy the excitement and variety of their restless life. For several years Raphael travelled in Hode's train, in the capacity of shohat, providing kosher meat for the little troupe in the unholy wilds of "far Russia." The grateful couple rewarded him so generously that he soon had a fortune of eighty rubles laid by.

The Store in Polotzk and the Blessing of the Rebbe

With eighty rubles saved, Raphael thought the time had come to settle down, but he did not know how to invest his wealth. To resolve his perplexity, he made a pilgrimage to the Rebbe of Kopistch, who advised him to open a store in Polotzk and gave him a blessed groschen to keep in the money drawer for good luck. The blessing of the "good Jew" proved fruitful. His business prospered, and his wife bore him children—several sons and one daughter. The sons were sent to heder, like all respectable boys, and were taught, in addition, writing and arithmetic, enough for conducting a business. With this Raphael was content; more than this he considered incompatible with piety. He was one of those who strenuously opposed the influence of the public school and bribed the government officials to keep their children's names off the register of schoolboys. When he sent his sons to a private tutor, where they could study Russian with their hats on, he felt, no doubt, that he was giving them all the education necessary to a successful business career without violating piety too grossly.

If reading and writing were enough for the sons, even less would suffice the daughter. A female teacher was engaged for Hannah Hayye, at three kopecks a week, to teach her the Hebrew prayers; and her mother, herself a better scholar than the teacher, taught her writing in addition. Hannah Hayye was quick to learn and expressed an ambition to study Russian. She teased and coaxed, and her mother pleaded for her, till Raphael was persuaded to send her to a tutor. But the fates were opposed to her education. On the first day at school, a sudden inflammation of the eyes blinded her temporarily, and although the distemper vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, it was taken as an omen, and she was not allowed to return to her lessons.

The Patriarch of a Prosperous Household

Raphael's success in business translated into a solid, comfortable family life that Mary Antin remembers as almost rich, as Polotzk counted riches in those days. The family moved into a larger house, where there was room for out-of-town customers to stay overnight, with stabling for their horses. They lived as well as any people of their class, and perhaps better, because Pinchus, the son-in-law, had brought home from his travels a taste for a more genial life than Polotzk usually asked for. Hannah Hayye kept a cook and a nursemaid, and a dvornik, or outdoor man, to take care of the horses, the cow, and the woodpile. All the year round the family kept open house. Cousins and aunts were always about, and on holidays friends of all degrees gathered in numbers. Coming and going in the wing set apart for business guests were merchants, traders, country peddlers, peasants, soldiers, and minor government officials. It was a full house at all times.

The household's reputation for refinement was such that envious mothers of rowdy children used to sneer, "Those grandchildren of Raphael the Russian are quite the aristocrats." The children's pretty manners were very much admired, and they became used to being held up as models to children less polite. Guests at the table praised their deportment when, at the end of a meal, they kissed the hands of father and mother and thanked them for food. This polish was the fruit of Raphael's prosperity, which allowed his grandchildren the leisure and instruction that other children in the Pale lacked.

Death and Legacy

Raphael's death marked a decisive turning point in the family's history. At the time, Pinchus had been away from home for nearly three years, having travelled as far east as Tchistopol on the Volga and south as far as Odessa on the Black Sea, trying his luck at various occupations within the usual Jewish restrictions. He had finally reached the position of assistant superintendent in a distillery, with a salary of thirty rubles a month—a fair income for those days—and was planning to have his family join him when Raphael died, leaving Hannah Hayye heir to a good business. Pinchus thereupon returned to Polotzk.

Because Hannah Hayye had been trained to her business from childhood, while Pinchus had had only a little irregular experience, she naturally remained the leader. She was as successful as her father before her. The people continued to call her Raphael's Hannah Hayye, and under that name she was greatly respected in the business world. Her eldest brother was now a merchant of importance, and her establishment was gradually enlarged. The legacy of Raphael, then, was not merely a store but a matriarchal competence that kept the family prosperous until the decision to emigrate to America.

Narrative Significance

Raphael's story serves as a counterpoint to the memoir's larger arc of emigration and Americanization. He represents the best that the Old World could offer a Jew within the confines of the Pale: piety, industry, and a comfortable prosperity bought through the blessing of a Rebbe and the shrewd management of a store. Yet his world was one of deliberate limitation—he opposed the public school, bribed officials to keep his sons off the school register, and considered more than rudimentary education incompatible with piety. His daughter's ambition to study Russian was thwarted by an omen. The freedom that his grandson-in-law would seek in America, where all occupations were respectable and all men were equal, was precisely the freedom that Raphael's orthodoxy foreclosed. In this sense, Raphael embodies the "Middle Ages" from which Mary Antin felt she had been transplanted, the wall within the wall of religious integrity that sustained the Jews of the Pale but also confined them. His death, which returned Pinchus to Polotzk and consolidated Hannah Hayye's leadership, set the stage for the family's later departure, making him both the founder of their prosperity and the representative of the old order they would leave behind.