The long-suffering Children of Israel, who had been scattered by the evil minions of the Czar all the way to the Banks of the Volga, had begun even here to show their remarkable capabilities for adapting themselves to new conditions. And no sooner had they found for themselves new sources of livelihood, than they also began to look for sources of spiritual nourishment for the soul.

The great Russian city of Yaroslavl, which until the war had been home to only a handful of Jewish families, mostly consisting of children and grandchildren of former conscripts.....had now all but turned into a great Jewish center. Everywhere there sprang up dozens of new synagogues and Houses of Study, even a special Hasidic house. Every day, between afternoon and evening prayers, and especially on Sabbath, you would see Jews hungrily devouring pages of the Bible with commentaries, and passages from the Talmud. Working-class Jews, tradesmen, could be seen reciting psalms, with the familar, back-home longing melodies.

The Russified Jews, the old residents, embraced their newly-arrived brothers from Lithuania. They warmed their frozen souls by the heat of the newly-rekindled Jewish fire. It was not unusual too see a match arranged between a local young person and a new-comer who had first seen the light of day in some village in the Province of Souvalk or Kovno. Parents eagerly sought out Jewish teachers for their young children. And the "voice of Jacob" rang out over the banks of the River Volga, just as it had long ago by the Rivers of Babylon....

The new focal point for intellectual life was the Jewish Folk School, which the Petrograd "APA" had opened especially for the homeless children.

This, the very first Jewish folk-school in Yarolavl, was established under the leadership of the teacher and pedagogue Ayerov, who, with his whole appearance, gave the impression of a Russian: blue eyes, a head of thinning blond hair, well dressed and well groomed. He even spoke Russian like a native-born "Ivan". But he possessed a warm Jewish heart. He concerned himself not only with the education of his hundreds of young charges, but also with their physical well-being: that they should always have a decent meal and warm clothes to wear. For this reason, the homeless children and their parents regarded him with a great deal of affection.

For every school event, the great school-hall would be packed with parents. At these "concerts", you would see the tired faces of the homeless fathers and mothers light up with pride. In those moments, they could forget that they had been driven away from their homes. The usually-quiet, modest school-director Ayerov, would be running around in such a state of excitement, beaming with pride, as though he himself were a child.

For one such school holiday, which fell on Passover, they brought in specially from Moscow the well-know Jewish pedagogueand writer A. Golomb, as a representative of the central "APA" (from 1939 to 1944, he was the princial of the I.L. Peretz school in Winnipeg), whose arrival made a strongly encouraging impression on everyone.

Almost every evening, the school building would be the site for a gathering of the Yaroslavl Jewish intellectuals, who were composed for the most part of former party activists: Budists, S.S.’ers, Zionists, and Poalei Zionists. These were people who now spent their days scratching out a meager livelihood. But when evening came, it was hard to be alone in their cramped rooms, with nothing but their loneliness and their longing for the former good times....the times of their youthful dreams of solving the world's problems, of redeeming the masses, etc. So they would come to the Folk-School, to their comrade and good friend Ayerov, where they could count on finding a friendly face and a sympathetic ear.

Quite often their would be guests, "big-shots" from the heartland: from Minsk, Moscow, Petrograd...they would give lectures, or hold discussions over Yiddish literature, the classics, or Jewish folklore. A leading Zionist would give a speech about Zionizm, about the role of Jews at the peace negotiations, etc. Often there would also be Jewish musicians, singers, who sould give a concert of Jewish music and folk songs.

The talented musician Yual Engel, a composer of Jewish melodies and folk motifs, and the author of the score for Sh. Anski's "Dybbuk" as performed by the theater group "Ha-Bimah", was featured in a violin concert, together with Yosef Vinogradov, the famous baritone from the Russian Czarist Opera. Yual Engl and Yosef Vinogradov, both of them assimilated Jews, took a great interest in Jewish art and culture. They played and sang Hasidic melodies and fok motifs with great emotion, which moved and delighted their listeners.

Understand, that prior to such events, it was necessary to come to an understanding with the local police authorities....because Yiddish speeches, Yiddish theater and even singing in Yiddish for a public audience was strictly forbidden.

These guest appearances did a great deal to help unite the scattered, isolated new Jewish communities. Everywhere they went, they brought new life to the exiles; they also brought greetings from those older, still-intact Jewish centers in the West...and in the end, they returned home with a message from the new communties..."not to worry", Israel will not falter!

The Jewish Folk School in Yaroslavl was my spiritual home. I didn't miss a single guest speaker, not one cultural get-together. I devoured every word which was spoken. I went to the school library, which the teachers had collected book by book. At every school event, I was the first to arrive, and the last to leave. I often lent a hand in the preparations for such events. I started to look on the school as a modern-day Yavneh. In the faces of its bedraggled "children at their studies" I saw the future of a new generation of our People, who would forge the next link in the eternal Jewish chain.

I was grateful for my fate, that had sent me all the way to the banks of the Volga...which had made me into a worker, a productive member of society, who lived from the bread he earned himself. And secondly, that in the short time I head been there, I had read and learned so much.

When I first came, I had seen only the tragedy of the Jewish People, its eternal march from one exile to the next. Now I saw things from a different point of view...the great vitality which was to be found in the Jewish character, the eternal Jewish stubborness of "even so".....that a people torn from their homes where they had lived for generations could lift themselves up from beneath a mountain of ruins, with their walking sticks in their hands and courage in their hearts....to wander over new highways and biways and finally re-establish themselves in new homes.

I witnessed how deep in the heart of "Holy Russia", in a thoroughtly Gentile city steeped in Russian Orthodoxy, where until now hardly a Jew was to be found, there now lived together, under one roof, Jew and Gentile. From one window, there shone the flame of a holy oil-lamp, which hung before a holy icon of Mother and Child....and from a second neighboring window, there shimmered the flames of Jewish Sabbath candles.

In the cold, remote city of Yaroslavl, whose wide streets were swept by wintry Siberian winds.....here you could see Jews in their Sabbath finery on their way to synagogue to receive the Sabbath, singing with fire and spirit the old song by the Spanish-Jewish poet, Shlomoh Halevi:

"Lekha dodi, likrat kallah, p'ney Shabbat nekablah...."

Yes, I rejoiced that it had been ordained that I myself should see how, from this foreign soil, their sprouted forth new Jewish life.