I was also sudying now at a somewhat higher level. Before I came to the Brisk Yeshiva, I knew the three main "Baveh's" from "Seder Nezikin", and also some of "Seder Nashim". Now I was acquainted with all the laws for consecrating a marriage, how to write up a marriage document. And if, God forbid, if the match should not turn out so well (and what greater misfortune could there be?)...I also knew how to write a divorce....

Having progressed to the next higher class, my new rosh-yeshiva, Reb Alkhanan Vasserman, who was known as a great scholar and a holy man, was very satisfied with me. I was also feeling very satisfied with myself....and my parents, likewise.

When I went home for holidays, I brought for my father a gift: a letter of recommendation, written and signed by the rosh-yeshiva himself. My mother was beside herself...she couldn't stop looking at me with proud, happy eyes. All the leading householders of the village, like Reb Pinyeh Frieburg the scholar; Reb Nyokh'keh, the slaughterer; Reb Nekhmiah Zhazhurski, the grain merchant, and others...all of them greeted me with a hearty "sholom-aleykhem". My father began to show towards me an unusual warmth, which I had until then seldom seen from him. He talked to me as though I were a grown-up...confided in me, as one would confide to a friend. My sister Pesheh, who was as taken with her little brother as she was with her own children, came to ask my parents if she could be allowed to invite me for one day of the holidays, to eat at her table. Even she wanted to have the recognition, the honor, of having me as her guest. Oh, I had it good!

Afternoon. The sun is shining, and I am sitting in the House of Study, among righteous Jews, reading out loud. I know that on the other side of the wall, in the women’s section, my mother is sittiting with her ears pricked up and her heart pounding, listening intently the sweet sound of my prayers. Her lips are whispering a silent plea to God, that he should not stop blessing her with his grace; and that her great satisfaction should not be taken away from her...

My father puts down his gemorrah, and comes over to me, to have a little chat. He asks me a question, and I answer him "one-two". Then, like a real Talmudic debater, he tries to throw me off the path mit a second question...but I don’t falter. I bring before him, from here and from there, various demonstrations and arguments, to show that I am right. I see a thin smile spread over his face, with such joy, like a child who is looking at a beautiful toy. And as for me, I feel such a warmth, such an uplifiting feeling in my soul, as though I have grown wings. My whole being is somehow filled with song.

At my mother's request, father took me into town to see the Rabbi...to see Reb Ruben Burshteyn, my father's good friend, that he should give me an audience. I repeated for him a particularly impressive passage, which I had heard from my Rov, Reb Alkhanen, the head of the Brisk Yeshiva. And what followed was the same as what had taken place earlier between me and my father. The Rabbi asked me one question after another, and I answered them all...first things first, and last things last. Before leaving, the Rabbi took my father aside, so that I shouldn’t hear what they said...and looking with one eye at me with the other towards my father, spoke to him in a quiet voice, that I could barely make out from a distance:

On the way home, my father hummed a little tune to himself. My mother, who couldn't wait fur us to return, came out to meet us. Father whispered something to her...and mother clasped both hands to her heart, and her thin face lit up with a fiery redness, as though she were a young girl who had been kissed for the first time by her beloved. That was how my dear, sweet mother reacted to the glad tidings, which my father brought back to her from the Rabbi of Kamenetz.

After the holidays. I am already back in my beloved city of Brisk. When I first came I had been terrified of her tall buildings, her busy streets and noisy trains. Now I feel at home here. I am familiar with all her ways and paths...with her long wide streets, and with her crooked, narrow lanes...I now feel for Brisk as Shmuel of Babylon must have felt when he proclaimed, gazing up at the constellations from his beloved city of Nahardai: "nahirin li shevlei derkia keshvilei Nahardai"; which means, "the streets of heaven are as familiar to me as the streets of my beloved Nahardai". I knew all of Grandmother’s neighbors who lived up and down the street, on Police Road: I knew already which of them were rich, and which had fallen on hard times; which of them were really religious and which of them were scoffers; who was generous, and who was a miser, etc.

Soon I was back in the yeshiva. My dozens of friends rushed to greet me....we shared with each other our fresh impressions from our visits home...showed off the new, fine clothes that our mothers had sewn for us in honor of the holidays. Those boys who hadn't gone home for the holidays gave us the news of what had happenned in the yeshiva in our absence. In the evening, we got together in a Hasidic house to celebrate the new term, which had just begun, with a full-blown feast. Each one laid on the table all the good, tasty treats, which he had just brought back from home. What a feast it was! We had everything good to eat, and washed it down with a pot of hot teat. We sang all kinds of songs....we talked, joked, and laughed together until long after midnight, as though we were the luckiest boys on earth....