In my first literary work, which came forth so unexpectedly, like a call from the depths of my soul, I didn't only bemoan my own, personal fate...rather, I wrote about the disaster that was taking place among my People: the armies of refugees and deportees, the Exile of Lithuania, whom I had so recently seen scattered on all the highways and byways, weak and hungry, humiliated and burdened. In them I saw a symbol of our long exile, which started out from the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, from the Guadalquiver and the Rhine, the Niemen and the Vistula, and continues to this day all the way to the banks of the Volga.

"Who knows," I wrote with feeling, "if it will ever end?

"Who knows where it will yet lead us?

"Is it all nothing more than the ancient "Get out of your country...", the constant cry to "Go! Keep going! You are a stranger! Everywhere a stranger!...."

I wrote not as one who went out with loaves of bread and pitchers of water to bring comfort to my hungry and thirsty brothers, the dispersed wanderes....but rather as one who was himself a wanderer among the great mass of displaced persons.

I did not merely bemoan the sufferings and the tribulations of my People Israel.....rather, like a faithful son of Israel, I also tried to find the true solution to our Exile, so that the Jewish People should no longer have to be the eternal scapegoat.

And wherein did I, the young boy who had suddenly been possessed by the Muse, see the road to Israel's salvation?

I wrote from the depths of my heart:

"Stand up, my People, cast off your chains of exile! Turn back to Holy Zion, and be once more a nation among nations! We will be the "light unto the Gentiles", the sole bearers of light among the nations, so let us come together, that we should also have a place under the sun!"

I believed, with all the fire of my youthful idealism, that as soon as the People of Israel" would hear my flaming words, my call to action, that they would quickly re-direct their March of Exile towards the Land of their Forefathers, where their problems would be solved.

And although my burning speech, my call to action, went no further than my rickety writing table, I continued to scour the writings of the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, to find the perfect phrase, to reach straight to the reader's soul. And when the Lord of the Universe would take pity on me and actually send me the word I was looking for....at that moment, there would be no limit to my joy.

I sat day and night and wrote with force and urgency. Red-hot words flowed from my pen as though driven by some primeval force, without pause or hesitation. Line after line, page after page, flowed from my pen with such speed, that I didn't even dare to stop and read them over. I was afraid that if I should pause for a rest, the stream might be interrupted, the way it had happened with the widow, in whose pitcher of oil the Prophet Elisha had sent his blessing.

The canvas on which I painted my pictures was of a dark gray color, and so was my tone, which resonated like a modern-day Book of Lamentations. From one side, I described the Jewish pain and suffering, which was as deep as the sea; from the other side, I decried the shame of man, the "chosen of Creation", who willingly renounces his "image of God" in favor of the Mark of Cain, by murdering his own brother. At the same time, I felt that I was experiencing a personal, spiritual awakening. For the first time, I understood the great, mysterious power that lay in the written word. One word is tied to second, and together they breath life into hidden thoughts...a wonderful interplay where ideas and emotions are clothed in words, where word and thought become one, just like in the story from Genesis, "Let us make man in our image..."

By writing, I could forget about my bleak surroundings, forget even about myself....that I was a stranger, lonely and up-rooted from my own soil, who lived under a stranger's name, which followed me everywhere like a dark shadow. Now I had discovered for myself a new world...a world of creation. In the written word I also found companionship, a sense of belonging, warmth and closeness. My life now had sense and purpose. I was no longer all alone with my own uncertain fate.

I didn't write only about the difficulties facing the Jewish people as a whole, but also stories. In my first stories, sketches and pictures from those days, I drew on my longings for home, from which I had been tossed so far away. I saw each one of my former neighbors, just as I had known them back then, as though I were still the same small boy back in my village.

I described the appearance of the ancient, grizzled beadle, Reb Moyshe Starishever, with his patriarchal countenance, his tall, stately figure, his long, silver-white beard and forelocks, which all but hung down below his belt...how he walked about so proudly, carrying his great staff, which was never to be seen without. He carried himself not like the beadle of an insignificant little House of Study in Zastavier, but rather as though he were the High Priest, preparing himself for holy service in the ancient Temple.

I had always looked on him with great respect. I used to see in him the incarnation of our Father Abraham, or some other such holy Jew, the way I pictured them in my childish imagination. It was for me a great pleasure, when on the the ever of Sabbath of a holiday, he gave me the distinction of helping him in the holy work of decorating the House of Study, polishing the brass candelabra, straightening out the place of worship, filling the copper barrel with water, spreading out the long tablecloths, etc. At that time he would be going about back and forth in the empty House of Study, humming a melody from a holiday prayer.

Reb Moyshe the Beadle was a "might Jew". Well into his eighties, he was still a mioght Jew. When he shook hands with you, you felt as though your hand had been suddenly caught between two millstones.

But as he got older, his memory began to fail him. Once he was lighting an anniversary candle, and accidentally knocked it over...it ignited the podium and the box of old books underneath it. The congregation had to put out the fire with wet towels and buckets of water. This somehow confused him, and he panicked. He took his great staff and begin to swing it left and right, all the while shouting desperately:

"Lord, Genitles have broken into your house, to foul your Holy Temple! To destroy your House of Worship!

In his delirious fantasy, he saw himself alone in the Holy Temple, which the enemy had set on fire. And he alone, the guardian of the House of God, would not permit that the fires should destroy it, even if he himself should perish for the "Sanctification of the Name". So long and hard did he fight the imaginary enemy, until his strength left him altogether, and he collapsed like a tree that had been cut down. They had to carry him home and lay him in his bed, from which he would never rise again.

It saddened me that this proud and glorious elder, who for me symbolized the the holy figures of ancient times, should end his days in such a common manner.

I described other figures from home: the beloved Reb Nyokhkeh the Slaughterer, the meek and holy one. He went about with quick steps, beard un forelocks blowing in the wind, eyes lit up, his face pale as a corpse. From deep inside his came forth a heavy groan, a sigh, because it was, alas, his duty to take a knife in hand, to slaughter a dumb creature. But for this he was not to blame: so it was ordained. And so he carried out his sacred mission.

And when his youngest son drowned in the river one hot summer Friday afternoon, he still went to synagogue to greet the Sabbath, like everyone else. And all through the Sabbath, no one saw on his face a sign of grief. He prayed and studied, even more than usual. And when his older son, suffering from a high fever, grabbed one of his father's knives and cut his own throat...once again, the unfortunate father, Reb Nyokhkeh, the meek and holy, accepted it as a judgement against himself...he took it for a sacrifice for his sins, for having all those years cut the throats of innocent, dumb animals.

That Nyokhkeh the Slaughterer had always stood out in my mind as a symbol great moral courage. I saw in him the Patriarch Abraham, who led his one-and-only son, Yitkhak, to the altar, and asked no questions, and did not hesitate.

I also used my pen to draw other pictures from home...brighter, happier ones. It was Simchat Torah at night. The little House of Study was packed with men, women and chilren. Elderly Jews led the procession around the synagogue holding aloft the Torah scrolls, children waved their flags. Women and girls, standing by the oven on the far side of the podium, leapt forward with out-stretched hands for the Torah scrolls, because it was the one time in the year when they had a good chance to kiss the holiness. Scholars with long beards and forelocks started dancing in a circle. Little Jewish children clapped their hands and danced along. The pranksters, young apprentices and tradesmen, threw spitballs and apple-cores at the respectable householders by the eastern wall. Everyone sang together: Everyone danced a karahod. I was also dancing. Everyone jumped...I also jumped. Everyone shouted....I also shouted.

It was good indeed; a pleasure. Here beside me stands my father. He looks at me proudly, not at all like the strict father from all year long. Over there, among the women’s congregation, stands my mother, beaming with joy. I lead her to the Torah Scrolls, where she wipes from her eye a joyful tear.

Drawing these pictures from my village, I could forget that ther was a war, that I was in a strange place, far from my family, from those closest to me, not knowing what the next morning would bring...rather, it felt like everything was as it was before, back in the good old days.

And once I had tasted the sweet, dripping honey of binding words to feelings, thoughts to words...I couldm’t tear myself away from it. I was drawn to it as though under a spell. I wrote day and night. I found in my writing a spiritual stronghold, an "city of refuge", a place of rest for my rudderless soul. My whole being was overcome with an inner peace, which flowed from the depths of my heart and soul. I wanted to thank and praise the Lord of the World, that I had found favor in his eyes, and He had seen fit to bless me with the holy spark.