The Promised Land | Page 8

those enforced sins. For four years he had led the life of a Gentile.
Piety alone was enough to make the Jews dread military service, but there were other things that made it a serious burden. Most men of twenty-one--the age of conscription--were already married and had children. During their absence their families suffered, their business often was ruined. At the end of their term they were beggars. As beggars, too, they were sent home from their military post. If they happened to have a good uniform at the time of their dismissal, it was stripped from them, and replaced by a shabby one. They received a free ticket for the return journey, and a few kopecks a day for expenses. In this fashion they were hurried back into the Pale, like escaped prisoners. The Czar was done with them. If within a limited time they were found outside the Pale, they would be seized and sent home in chains.
There were certain exceptions to the rule of compulsory service. The only son of a family was exempt, and certain others. In the physical examination preceding conscription, many were rejected on account of various faults. This gave the people the idea of inflicting injuries on themselves, so as to produce temporary deformities on account of which they might be rejected at the examination. Men would submit to operations on their eyes, ears, or limbs, which caused them horrible sufferings, in the hope of escaping the service. If the operation was successful, the patient was rejected by the examining officers, and in a short time he was well, and a free man. Often, however, the deformity intended to be temporary proved incurable, so that there were many men in Polotzk blind of one eye, or hard of hearing, or lame, as a result of these secret practices; but these things were easier to bear than the memory of four years in the Czar's service.
Sons of rich fathers could escape service without leaving any marks on their persons. It was always possible to bribe conscription officers. This was a dangerous practice,--it was not the officers who suffered most in case the negotiations leaked out,--but no respectable family would let a son be taken as a recruit till it had made every effort to save him. My grandfather nearly ruined himself to buy his sons out of service; and my mother tells thrilling anecdotes of her younger brother's life, who for years lived in hiding, under assumed names and in various disguises, till he had passed the age of liability for service.
If it were cowardice that made the Jews shrink from military service they would not inflict on themselves physical tortures greater than any that threatened them in the army, and which often left them maimed for life. If it were avarice--the fear of losing the gains from their business for four years--they would not empty their pockets and sell their houses and sink into debt, on the chance of successfully bribing the Czar's agents. The Jewish recruit dreaded, indeed, brutality and injustice at the hands of officers and comrades; he feared for his family, which he left, often enough, as dependents on the charity of relatives; but the fear of an unholy life was greater than all other fears. I know, for I remember my cousin who was taken as a soldier. Everything had been done to save him. Money had been spent freely--my uncle did not stop at his unmarried daughter's portion, when everything else was gone. My cousin had also submitted to some secret treatment,--some devastating drug administered for months before the examination,--but the effects were not pronounced enough, and he was passed. For the first few weeks his company was stationed in Polotzk. I saw my cousin drill on the square, carrying a gun, on a Sabbath. I felt unholy, as if I had sinned the sin in my own person. It was easy to understand why mothers of conscript sons fasted and wept and prayed and worried themselves to their graves.
There was a man in our town called David the Substitute, because he had gone as a soldier in another's stead, he himself being exempt. He did it for a sum of money. I suppose his family was starving, and he saw a chance to provide for them for a few years. But it was a sinful thing to do, to go as a soldier and be obliged to live like a Gentile, of his own free will. And David knew how wicked it was, for he was a pious man at heart. When he returned from service, he was aged and broken, bowed down with the sense of his sins. And he set himself a penance, which was to go through the streets every Sabbath morning, calling the people