ot inspire him, and his days were blank.
The life he was expected to lead grew distasteful to him, and yet he
knew no other way to live. He became lax in his attendance at the
synagogue, incurring the reproach of the family. It began to be
rumored among the studious that the son-in-law of Raphael the Russian
was not devoting himself to the sacred books with any degree of
enthusiasm. It was well known that he had a good mind, but evidently
the spirit was lacking. My grandparents went from surprise to
indignation, from exhortation they passed to recrimination. Before my
parents had been married half a year, my grandfather's house was
divided against itself and my mother was torn between the two
factions. For while she sympathized with her parents, and felt
personally cheated by my father's lack of piety, she thought it was
her duty to take her husband's part, even against her parents, in
their own house. My mother was one of those women who always obey the
highest law they know, even though it leads them to their doom.

How did it happen that my father, who from his early boyhood had been
pointed out as a scholar in embryo, failed to live up to the
expectations of his world? It happened as it happened that his hair
curled over his high forehead: he was made that way. If people were
disappointed, it was because they had based their expectations on a
misconception of his character, for my father had never had any
aspirations for extreme piety. Piety was imputed to him by his mother,
by his rebbe, by his neighbors, when they saw that he rendered the
sacred word more intelligently than his fellow students. It was not
his fault that his people confused scholarship with religious ardor.
Having a good mind, he was glad to exercise it; and being given only
one subject to study he was bound to make rapid progress in that. If
he had ever been offered a choice between a religious and a secular
education, his friends would have found out early that he was not born
to be a rav. But as he had no mental opening except through the
hedder, he went on from year to year winning new distinction in Hebrew
scholarship; with the result that witnesses with preconceived ideas
began to see the halo of piety playing around his head, and a
well-to-do family was misled into making a match with him for the sake
of the glory that he was to attain.

When it became evident that the son-in-law was not going to develop
into a rav, my grandfather notified