Morning and Evening, Pt. XXI
Previously: Morning and Evening, Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, and XX
The parcels seemed pitifully small: all that he owned were a few dark clothes and the set of Talmud volumes, bound in leather, which the community had given him on the occasion of his bar-mitzvah. It was all bound in twine and it lay on his bed, which tomorrow his mother would strip of its sheets for the last time. The twine was attached to the thicker rope that looped around his shoulder and it dangled nearly to his hip. There was a great wheel of bread in the oven and a crowd of boiled eggs rising to the lip of the bowl that stood on the stove. All was ready for his journey, even the rip at the seam of his overcoat’s shoulder had been mended. He had spoken his parting words to the heder-boys and the community elders and the merchants. They had wished him luck and safety and showered him with blessings; the spines of the Talmud volumes they had given him gleamed black, the pages freshly cut, new this year from the printing-house in Vilna. A boy who comes to yeshiva with his hands full only of crushed eggshells and the last crumbs of bread from his mother’s oven is a pauper, but a boy who brings the Talmud with him to the house of study is a rich man among rich men.