CHAPTER 1

Menachem Mendel Frieden's Apologia

I approach the writing of my memoir because of an inner impulse torecord all that is preserved in my memory about the life of my familyand about my own life, which encompasses the end of the nineteenthcentury and the beginning of the twentieth. I do not pretend to providenew insights concerning Jewish life in general during this period. Muchhas already been written about the Lithuanian Diaspora by Jewish authorsin the past and they have written very well. I am interested mainlyin the life of my own family. To the extent that I am able, I wish to leavefor members of the family in future generations an accurate portrait ofthe life of the family in the past and to spare them the despair that overtakesme as I come to write about the past, on account of the lack of anydetails about the earlier generations of our family. I recall how, whenI was still in my childhood, I used to leaf through the empty pages ofmy father's books, the first pages in the binding; perhaps I'd find somenotation about early members of the family. And I recall my disappointmentat finding all the pages blank.

Occasionally, I would turn to my parents, asking them to tell mesomething about their past. They would put me off with a question:"What does it matter to you?" I would listen in on the intimate eveningconversations between my grandmother and my mother as theyspoke about the past and about life in olden times. These have beenpreserved in my memory—things I learned in childhood—meager bitsof information, it is true, but they can form a sort of initial foundationfor my work, if I am at all able to dredge up from murky oblivionthat which my eyes observed and my ears heard during my childhoodand adolescence; if I am able to make known their correct meaningand to be capable of describing the nature of that life from a timenow distant.

How pleased I would have been had earlier members of the familythought to record their memoirs as a keepsake for future generations.How important this is for one who is inclined to wonder aboutthe family's past. May future generations not come to fault me in thisregard. Every generation makes its demands. There was a time longago when the generations thought about the future. Evidence of thiscomes from the ancient sites that have been discovered over the lastcentury, ancient sites and hiding places in caves. And even before them,hiding places and antiquities were discovered. It is the nature of manto be concerned that his memory will never be forgotten; our sageshave said that the first human being wrote a book of memoirs: SifradAdam Kadmoni.

A second reason for this impulse is to give coming generations ofmy family an opportunity to learn from my mistakes so that they canavoid making them. I have made many mistakes in my life, due eitherto lack of knowledge or lack of experience, mistakes of my youth, of mymiddle years, and also mistakes of my old age. Indeed, "there is no righteousman in the land who has not sinned," and sin is almost always aresult of error or loss of sanity; these are synonymous. My hope is thatthose who read my words will benefit from them and find them useful,and this will be my reward.

This, and more. The course of my life has passed through three continents:Russia, North America, and the Land of Israel. Each land hasits own customs and lifestyle; each country its own culture and laws,and whether we like it or not, we are influenced by the variations fromplace to place, whether we realize it or not. In this memoir, if I am able,I would like to give an accounting to myself, to summarize everything,to the extent that my memory will serve me as I stand at the thresholdof old age. May my memory not fail me. May the calmed psyche of oldage not induce me to brighten up the past with the lantern of the present;may I succeed in bringing to life that which I experienced and perhapsalso the personal emotions that always accompany events. The lateDr. Shmaryahu Levin once said: "Feelings are what build bridges betweenthoughts and actions." And if this is so, then past events can't beaccurately described without remembering the feelings that influencedthem. I have at hand no notes, either my own or those of someone else.Although I always thought about keeping a diary, I never did. And howsorry about that I am now.

In the year 1923, two years after I made aliya to the Land of Israeland after I left the cigarette business with my hands in the air, when Ihad to decide if I should return to the United States or remain in thecountry and try my hand at an office job, in a dejected mood and findingit...