My teacher, the high-schooler with the beautiful dimples and the smooth round cheeks, withe her sweet smile, couldn't find enough words to praise my rapid progress. I completely forgot the reason I was studying so fervently the Russian language....which was supposedly to provide myself with a future, as my brother in Warsaw had wanted. Instead, I found myself studying with such diligence, in order to find favor in the eyes of that lovely girl...that when she smiled, my whole body and soul was flooded with warmth...

That teacher of mine, I quickly learned, was one of a group of youthful students who had committed themselves to a sacred task: "the spreading of education and knowledge" among the poor street urchins, young workers, and yeshiva-boys in the city. These "spreaders of light" were known to show a considerable measure of warmth and commitment to their poor students. They provided them with the necessary textbooks, and for the very poor among them, even with pocket money, that they should have with what to buy themselves something to eat. Most of all, they went out of their way make sure we were exposed to a certain type of reading material....books, brochures, and other illicit material, which one wouldn't dare to be caught with in any religious Jewish home...these books would be passed around quietly from hand to hand, and devoured like hot potatoes. They helped especially "to open the eyes" of the religious yeshiva-boys, that they should no longer have to stumble in the darkness.

My brother's good friend, the bootmaker "B...", was strongly committed to this holy task, the "spreading of light" among the poor, "down-trodden masses". He, and other such individuals, intelligent craftsman, willingly made available their premises, which would be, every night after work, transformed into secret Russian "schools".

I and Avraham-Aron, my fellow Zastavier with whom I had forged a "holy bond", would very quietly sneak away from the yeshiva, which was ruled by the strict discipline of supervisors and assistant-supervisors, like the cruel Reb Hennekh, Reb Yankl Kleshtsheller, and above them the head supervisor, Reb Yisroel. They used to watch over each yeshiva-boy as though with a thousand eyes....so we would go instead to the House of Study. Because over there, although Reb Yerukham Shatz's son-in-law was the Head of the Yeshiva, there was not quite such a strict disipline as there was back in the yeshiva; which meant, we were on our own.

We would go off in a corner of the great House of Study, supposedly swaying in prayer, and humming a prayer-melody.....but instead of reading the Gemorrah, like all the other yeshiva-boys, we were secretly practising our "lessons", doing sums, or reading a savory book, such as "Love of Zion" and other such books which those people, our good friends, had supplied us with...

And to that "forbidden fruit" we were drawn as though by magic, so that you couldn’t tear yourself away from it. It held out an attraction for us that was irresitible. It opened up all at once for us whole new worlds, of which we had previously had not a glimpse.

Most of all, we devoured virtually every word of the two books, "The Polish Youth", by Yual Linietzki, and Fayerbergs "To Where?", which my brother had sent me all the way from Warsaw. "The Polish Youth" had mercilessly torn down within me every trace of respect which I had previously felt towards the Hasidim and their rabbis. All at once they began to look to me like some kind of a hoaxters, a gang of swindlers, gluttons, "this-worlders", who you wouldn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

The second book, the Hebrew "To Where?", shook me deeply. It laid out before me a disturbing picture of the sick Jewish society with all its deep-seated problems. And above all, it cut me loose in a stormy sea of doubts with regard to my previously-held beliefs about God and Man...about right and wrong...I felt as though something had broken under my feet....

That long winter, which had so un-expectedly torn me away from my yeshiva-boy’s contentment, and thrust me face to face with a series of questions and problems concerning Jewish society and my own future, went by very quickly. And before I had time to look around me and see where I stood in the world, I found myself suddenly on the threshold of the belived Eve of Passover, with its fore-runner, the Great Sabbath. I hurriedly closed the door on my newly-discovered Russian world, packed up my few possessions, along with my new Russian and Jewish books, and with the last wagon convoy, I was on my way home to my parents, where the winter had not brought about any "revolutions", and where Passover would still be the same as it always had been!