PERMISSION TO LEAVE
So, the next morning, when they were all in schul praying, and they had the tallis that the men are wearing after the Bar Mitzvah, they all wear shawls. They have the tallis over their heads, and they lean down, and they say a certain kind of prayer. So, I thought I’ll go into the schul and while they are praying I’ll ask all the men there to talk to my father. I interrupted them during prayers and asked, ‘Is it right for him to marry me off to a [Dora upset] I was 15. ...to marry me off to a man who was 45, with three children? And I didn’t even... He didn’t even do anything for me? I didn’t even like him for an uncle.’ In the old country, a woman is not supposed to go into the men’s section of a syna- gogue. You have to sit upstairs. The women sit upstairs. They are not allowed to be together with the men in the same room. So, when you see a woman walking into the main schul of the synagogue, that means they are going to say Kaddish. They only do this if somebody’s on their dying bed. They offer Kaddish to ask God to take mercy on them. So, I walked in, and they all rolled up the tallis from their head, and they recognized me. Dopke, They use to call me. ‘Dopke, what are you doing here? How did you come to...?’ So I says, ‘I want you to stop your pray- ing, and I want to tell my story. I want you people to be mine guardian and help me.’ I said, ‘There is my father.’ He was right there. ‘My father wants to marry me off to such-and- such a man, and I told them the story.’ They all knew Moshe, too. ‘All I want from my father is just to pay the man to bring me over to Amer- ica. He doesn’t have to care for me; he doesn’t have to do nothing for me.’ The Shochet went over to my father and said, ‘Mikel, haven’t you got a feeling in your heart? Hinda left you three children, one you buried already. Why can’t you consider these two children like your other children with Devorah?’ He had already about six children. So, he didn’t answer them. He was ashamed that I came into the synagogue. He came home and beat me so that I thought that was the end of me.
Finally, my father called me in one night. He must have talked to my stepmother, and they decided they are going to send me to Amer- ica [age 15], but they are not going to give me anything. Just the ticket. The ticket from Russia to America was 45 rubles. When they started to talk seriously about me going away, I says to my father, ‘Why don’t you open my mother’s trunk and let me take something for memory that I had a mother.’ My stepmother immediately said, ‘No, this will never happen.’ The day came. They put me on a train, and I went to Warsaw, then to Bremen, to wait for a ship. He gave me a 50 kopek piece, about half a dollar. That is all the money I was given to take care of myself until I got to America. Before I left we got a notice from the tick- et office, ‘You can’t come into America unless you show at least 25 rubles of your own money. You need to show you won’t be a burden upon America.’ I gave my father my hand, in Europe, it is called K’scaraf [sic]. I swore to him that I wouldn’t touch it. As soon as I got to Ameri- ca, how the money is folded up, that’s how I’m gonna send it back. I just want to show immi- gration that I have the 25 rubles.
25 Rubles
31
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease