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Hakhmatova. (Memoir).

Article Excerpt
Hakhmatova! This is the name of a village about 15 viorsts from Zashkov, about ten miles. It had a population of about a thousand Russians, among whom dwelt six or seven Jewish families. The Jews lived rather not badly in their own society. They even had a minyan every Sabbath for the menfolk, and they even had a Torah scroll. But business competition often led to quarrels among the Jews.

The richest among them was Reb Yisroel, a merchant with a nice little general store. He also sold bread, dealt in timber, and in eggs, etc. He occupied a large house with many rooms and with separate apartments for his married children. As each child married, he added a few more rooms. All of his sons were business partners in his enterprises and lived a bourgeois life, with nice furniture and fine clothes, a handsome team of horses for the carriage, whether hired or owned outright, and all the children were very well educated. The sons were learned in the Bible and in Hebrew grammar, and they were even able to read the Talmud. They were very respectful of their parents.

I remember an incident, when the youngest, who had a habit of pulling on his beard (which he dared not shave off), made his mother very nervous when he tugged at the hairs growing out of his chin. She was even driven to banish her son for a week if he persisted. So he couldn't sleep in the house proper but in the kitchen for a week.

Another Jew in town was called Hatskel (Yehezkel), who was a pauper. He was a smith, with a dilapidated shed on the outskirts of the village, where he toiled at shoeing the horses of the peasants, repairing their wagons, and sharpening their cutlery, and, in general, fixing whatever farmers needed. But he couldn't provide for his wife and children. His wife, Hatskelikha, as the peasants called her, had a side business. She installed a big kettle in the house, from which she sold the peasants sweetened tea, or a glass of kvass, or a herring, or even kerosene, needles and thread, etc. The smith was a simple Jew, hardly able to read the Hebrew...