that Boaz never whipped us for nothing. There was
always a reason for it. It was either for not learning our lessons, for
not wanting to pray well, for not obeying our fathers and mothers, for
not looking in, and for not looking out, for just looking, for praying
too quickly, for praying too slowly, for speaking too loudly, for
speaking too softly, for a torn coat, a lost button, a pull or a push,
for dirty hands, a soiled book, for being greedy, for running, for
playing--and so on, and so on, without an end.

One might say we were whipped for every sin that a human being can
commit. We were whipped for the sake of the next world as well as this
world. We were whipped on the eve of every Sabbath, every feast and
every fast. We were told that if we had not earned the whippings yet, we
would earn them soon, please God. And Boaz gave us all the whippings we
ought to have had from our friends and relatives. They gave the pleasant
task in to his hands. Then we got whippings of which the teacher said:

"You surely know yourself what they are for." And whippings just for
nothing. "Let me see how a little boy lets himself be whipped." In a
word, it was whippings, rods, leathers, fears and tears. These prevailed
at that time, in our foolish little world, without a single solution to
the problems they brought into being, without a single remedy for the
evils, without a single ray of hope that we would ever free ourselves
from the fiendish system under which we lived.

And the good angel of whom my mother spoke? Where was he--that good
angel?

* * *

I must confess there were times when I doubted the existence of this
good angel. Too early a spark of doubt entered my heart. Too early I
began to think that perhaps my mother had fooled me. Too early I became
acquainted with the emotion of hatred. Too early, too early, I began to
hate my teacher Boaz.

And how could one help hating him? How, I ask you, could one help hating
a teacher who does not allow you to lift your head? That you may not
do--this you may not say. Don't stand here. Don't go there. Don't talk
to So-and-so. How can one help hating a man who has not in him a germ of
pity, who rejoices in another's pains, bathes in other's tears, and
washes himself in other's blood? Can there be a more shameful word than
flogging? And what can be more disgraceful than to strip anybody stark
naked and put him in a corner? But even this was not enough for Boaz. He
required you t