About the town.
MAX: We were living in a small town; there were about five or six main streets, and there were two lakes surrounding the town, but inside there were six, seven, eight streets, avenues, something like that. There was a main street where the young boys and the young girls used to go out on dates. These streets took us out of the middle of the town, out in the big world! To the bigger cities. There was the road to the railroad station and also the road for the boys and girls to go romancing. Yeah! In those days was the same thing as nowadays.
Today the town of Wysokie Litewskie -1- is just due east of the Russian border near a main artery connecting the cities of Brezesc and Bialystok. In 1895 Wysokie Litewskie had 4,105 inhabitants, most of whom were Jews. -2- Geographically and economically, Wysokie Litewskie was like thousands of other towns throughout the world. It was a nucleus of commerce, around which produce was grown in small farming villages. There was a noticeable ethnographic division between Jews and gentiles: the Jews clustered together within the town; the gentiles lived on the farms.
The Jews have had a long history of political and religious oppression which had inexorably determined the way in which they lived their daily lives. The concept of Diaspora, which is both a state of being and a state of mind, is illustrative of the Jewish formula for survival, begun six hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ. It exemplifies the wanderings of a people who live in perpetual exile, hoping always to return to Palestine. Although the Jews have lived in exile, they have always adapted to their host culture without losing their own identity. The very teachings of the Talmud, the Jewish book of learning, stress the importance of the Jews always retaining their ability to live peaceably within another civilization, so that they would be able to maintain their own identity.
A permanent component of that unity was, however, the knowledge that at any moment the Jews might be banished from the place in which they lived, as the result of any number of religious, economic and political factors. They therefore pursued occupations that consisted of temporary transactions with clients or employers: those that could be left quickly and easily. They became proficient in specific skills and trades, excelling as craftsmen, artisans, financiers, salesmen, and professionals.
MAX: So, according to my memory, (there were) front streets, with front stores, with better houses, and then there were lesser streets, with lesser houses. Yeah, there were streets that the houses there were more money, they were closer to the main market streets... We had stores, and there were openings from two or three sides where we could go in; in the inside (they) built stores around where the underground peasants, men and women used to come from the villages, sit down on the ground, and put their stuff around them and sell! And there were also stores inside and outside. This was the center, the center of the town.
There was a permanent structure in the town square of Wysokie Litewskie which housed the market. There were synagogues and churches, some apartment buildings, and two hospitals, one for the Jews and one for Christians.
There was also an apothecary with a nursery in which herbs for medicines were grown, and even a distillery of pure grain alcohol, a brewery, water mills, and a tax bureau and courthouse.
In order to maintain their cohesiveness as a cultural and economic group, the Jews had to essentially isolate themselves. Because of economics, however, they also had to peaceably coexist with their gentile neighbors. In Tsarist Russia, this harmonious relationship did indeed exist, until the changing political situation caused the forced ghettoization of Jews. Wysokie Litewskie was within the Pale of Settlement, a 362,000 square mile area of western Russia in which Jews were forced to live.1 During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, a series of edicts were proclaimed which had the effect of gradually decreasing and ultimately eliminating the few rights the Jews had previously held. For instance, while Wysokie Litewskie had its own Kahal, or Jewish governing body, Jewish boys had to enter military service as if they were Russians, and were expected to be loyal as such.
Yet until things became intolerable, the Jews lived within the Pale, continuing the tradition of Diaspora in adapting themselves to the gentile world around them. While Tsarist oppression denied them opportunities, it also served to strengthen the unity of the Jewish people.
MAX: Many times in the years I prayed to come there and see the little town ... In the summertime it used to be that all the individuals, tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, in addition to their... trade, everybody had a cow. The cow used to give us milk, and cheese and butter, and there used to be pastach, I don't know what to say. Pastach is the one who feeds the cow. But when the spring came, and the grass started to come up, so we had a combination group of cows... And (they would) bring [3] them back at dawn (sic), the sun used to set down, and you hear from here, there, everywhere, moooooo!!! Everybody knew that their cows are coming home. Every night! Sleep over in the house!
And the cows were so trained, that they used to come in from the street, and stop off at the window, and why the window? You know why the window?
My father used to prepare some old bread, rolls, other things... The cows they were so trained, that when they came to the house, they didn't go any further, this was their house. And the cows used to come to the house, and my father, he should rest in peace, opened the door, and he used to handle over a piece of bread, a piece of food to the cow. The cow used to stay, she wouldn't move away until she got something, a sandwich! After that, the cow went her way, in the barn, and my mother used to milk the cow, and get out the milk, put it in cans, and use it! We used to make cream cheese, and cheese, and all this, and butter and everything. Sure! Life was organized, to a certain extent ... with nothing around, with their own hands to sew, make men's suits and lady's suits and all this ...
Each little shtetl in the Pale was a world unto itself. Occupations ranged from standard services to the gentiles-tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths – to the particularly Jewish professions – match-makers, Sabbath candle-lighters, synagogue beadles. The Jews tried to be as self-sufficient as possible, and while few were farmers, most had a cow and some chickens, and a small barn in which to house them. Expanding outward from the center of the town were unpaved streets. The houses, one after the other, were situated on small plots of land but were close enough so that one always knew his neighbor's business.
Although owning farm animals was a natural part of Jewish existence, the Jews were basically estranged from the earth. They could not tie themselves to a land from which they almost surely would be forced to leave. It was not until the declaration of the state of Israel that Jews began to reestablish their affinity for the earth. It is true that the cow provided Max's family with sustenance and was, indeed, a part of the family – yet his comic treatment of the cow's role underscores a basic unfamiliarity with nature.
LISA: Did you have any other animals, any chickens? ·
MAX: Yeah, chickens. Always chickens. Chickens used to be in the back, squawk... Everybody had chickens.