First came the "Rental Authority", who determined the prices for the rooms, the accomodations, so that God forbid no one should be "taken to the cleaners". It was a kind of rent controls. He also arbitrated certain disputes, which would break out from time to time, between the landladies and their boarders. The "Rental Authority" also concerned himself, as much as possible, to see that the newcomers should be placed together with the older residents, so that the older "Masoratics" should be able to "keep an eye" oyf di new arrivals, the youngsters...that they shouldn't stray from the path of righteousness, not to the left and not to the right.

The yeshiva also had its own support commitee, a kind of anonymous charity, which quietly provided assistance to the very poor. To this end, they had their own bank, a free-loan caisse, which gave out loans against such securities as watches, books, and other such articles of value...

Apart from all these well-established instututions, there was one more, which stood above all the others. This was a kind of "KGB" which carried on among the yeshiva-boys a quiet, relentless surveillance on behalf of the director and the supervisor.

For the sake of the town of Slobodka itself, it would have been unnecessary to have such a "spy-organization"; because the town, which lay on the banks of the River Vilya, across from the much bigger Kovno, was a very poor one. Her few thousand residents were for the most part simple, coarse working-men, who earned their meager livelihood from hard work on the river, from loading and unloading barges with merchandise, or from driving log-rafts down the river. In fact, they drew a significant portion of their livelihood from the more than one thousand yeshiva boys, who studied there in the three yeshivas: "Knesset Yisroel", named after Reb Yisroel Salanter (of blessed memory), which was the largest; "Knesset Beth Isaac", after the name of the famous Rabbi of Kovno, Reb Isaac Alkhanan (of blessed memory); and the smaller "Or Ha-Khayim", or as it was known, "Reb Hershels Yeshiva". The houses were, for the most part, small, wooden, and one-storied. The streets and lanes - short and muddy. It was indeed most fitting that here, in such an out-of-the-way place, there should be found such great, world-famous yeshivas. With its combination of so much Torah side by side with such abject poverty, not to mention the directors loyal agents......the "evil one" shouldn't have been able to find a place to set foot....

In Kovno you could also find a fair number of freethinkers writers, and poets. They had there a beautiful, fine library named after their beloved fellow townsman, Avraham Mapu, the author of "Ahavot Tzion", "Ashemet Shomron", etc. And indeed there, on the high Mount Alexoter, at whose feet flows majestically the River Niemen, which joins together with the Vilya...there stands the house where the great Napoleon had his head quarters during the time when he led his heroic soldiers into Russia...and in the same house, Mapu would later write his great works, especially "Ahavot Tzion". For him the high Mount Alexoter was transformed into the Hills of Judea in Ephraim....and here, where the River Vilya flowed together with the Niemen...here he saw the Jordan, cutting its way through the Sea of Galillee, as it winds its way southwards towards the Dead Sea.

In that library, so they said, was the gathering place for the towns freethinkers, writers, and various other intellectuals. Already more than one yeshiva-boy had been led inside there, made to stumble, and come back "damaged goods"....they said that even the supervisor’s son from "Reb Hirshl's Yeshiva" had been drawn inside and led astray....and become a writer of Yiddish books! His religious father, the strict Masoratic, had saidk the prayer for the dead, rent his garments, and sat in mourning....

It was before that "gang", who were always to be found in the Kovno Library, that "the Old Man", Reb Notte-Hirsh, the director of "Knesset Yisroel", lived in deathly fear. He stood vigil day and night, so that those "good old boys" from the other side of the river, should God forbid not be able to stretch out their long arms and set a trap for his charges...he surrounded himself with a close circle of loyal agents, who were ready, on his orders, to throw themselves in a lime-oven. These zealous watchers helped him to keep an eye on the whole youthful community...and God help that unfortunate yeshiva-boy, who was caught in the act of crossing the threshold of that sinful library! The "Old Man", Reb Notte-Hirsh, would deal with him personally...and if he saw that the miscreant was beyond rehabilitation, he would be unceremoniously expelled from within the walls of the Slobodka yeshiva.

But basically, despite the strict supervision, we had a certain amount of contact with secular, worldly knowledge. This was largely on account of widely-available Yiddish newspapers, over which there was not such a strict prohibition. Reading them, the yeshiva-boy would realize that outside the four walls of the "Tents of the Semites and the Hebrews", there lay a great, wide world, and one was also a part of her.

There was one case which made a big impression, not only within the Yeshiva, but also in the city at large. A young boy, by the name of Motke Kamenetzer (who was actually a fellow townsman, and even slightly related to me), was the main protagonist of the story: previously, he had been known as a prodigy, virtually an open head. He was the pride of the yeshiva...everyone predicted that he would grow up to be a "great man of Israel". He was indeed the favorite of the Director and the Head of the Yeshiva.

And then this young boy, Motke Kamenetzer, suddenly found the dark road which led to the forbidden library. It didn't take long before the matter came to the attention of the Old Man. He tried with all his strenght to save his soul from that satanic posession. At first he tried with gentle, sincere persuasion...and when that didn't work, with warnings and threats. But nothing helped. And it wasn't enough that he himself had become a freethinker; he was also a great trouble-maker: he wanted no less, than that all the other yeshiva-boys should also cast aside their gemorras, go over "to the other side"...to throw in their lot with the Enlightenment! He went around among them, agitating, ridiculing their studies, their lack of a future, their gemorrah-melody, their whole way of life...

And so when the Old Man had tried all possible means, and nothing had worked....he suddenly, in the days of repentance leading up to the New Year, sent a telegram to the boy's parents in Kamenetz, to the following effect:

"Your son is dangerously ill. Please come at once."

Back home, when his parents received this telegram, with its dark news, there was a wailing in the village. People rushed to the synagogue, raised pandemonioum, and flung themselves on the holy ark. When the distraught mother reached Slobodka, it was already the first day of the New Year. Half dead and half alive, she rushed from the station to her son's "bedside". But instead of finding him in bed, dangerously ill, she saw her "precious" sitting comfortably at a table, without a hat, smoking a cigarette and reading a Russian book...an illicit brochure!

The shocked, broken mother complained bitterly to the "Old Man":

"Why!? Have you no God in your heart!...to take a mother of small children, and scare her to death! To ruin the holidays for me and my family? My Motke, long may he live, is completely sound!"

The "Old Man", Reb Notte-Hirsh, gave the mother a sad, meaningful look, and adressed her with a deep cough:

"Your son is truly ill...very ill. Not a sickness of the body, but a seckness of the soul, which is much worse."

The mother stood there devastated. When she re-gained her composure, she asked with tears in her eyes:

"Rabbi, give me the answer, how shall I save him?"

"Take him home, and make him a tradesman" The "Old Man" abruptly cut short the discussion, and turned around with his face to the wall.

All the arguments and pleadings from the unlucky, broken mother had no effect. The next morning, Motke, the one-time prodigy and the present-day freethinker, had to go back with his mother to Kamenetz.

And so order to protect the yeshiva-boys of Slobodka, so that God forbid, to them should not happen the same thing which happened to Motke Kamenetzer...Reb Notte-Hirsh, the director, had established that "spy-organization", which would stop at nothing to accomplish its ends. By them there was a saying: "thou shalt banish the evil from among you".