The Diary of Yitzhak Lamdan

Interpretive Summary – Tuesday night, January 4, 1916, Hubyn Pershyi

Yitzhak set aside a new poem he finished to capture in his diary the existential thoughts that influenced his poem about the mystery of life. He quotes from Ecclesiastes about the futility of life and then expands on that idea. What purpose is there to life and life’s efforts when death lies in wait? A human being is no better than an animal, he writes. Both end up in the ground decomposing. In fact, an animal’s life is better than a humans, because animals don’t think about or fear death until the very end. What is the purpose of human endeavors, Yitzhak wonders. In thinking this way, Yitzhak echoes earlier thoughts he wrote about in the summer of 1914 even before the War started (see July 19, 1914). One generation follows another and on their graves other lives will dance.” The mystery of life is difficult to crack and Yitzhak wonders why such an insignificant person as himself tries to ponder it when such deep thinkers have tried before him.

In this vein, the poem he just finished focused on the stages of a man’s life. Given the nature of life, Yitzhak concludes that the days of childhood and youth are the best period. Those days “there was nothing bad, no despair, no doubt, and also no death, only goodness, innocence and faith and radiance without end…” But then adolescence arrives with disappointments, futile love, and impulses that must be controlled. Adolescence is followed by the yoke of adulthood when the focus turns to labor and worrying about food and money. Then old age arrives, when the fire of life fades and death is around the corner.

“There is only one remedy for this, one lap in which to hide oneself from these dark thoughts, and that is – the religious feeling,” Yitzhak concludes. One must turn one’s face upward, Yitzhak writes quoting Isaiah and a saying of the writer and thinker, Hillel Zeitlin, though Yitzhak acknowledges he still has a long way to go to attain a true level of devotion, what is called teshuvah (return to God) in religious language.

Interpretive Summary – Wednesday night, January 5th, 1916, Hubyn Pershyi

In this short diary entry, the third day in a row he has written, Yitzhak is deeply grieving separation from his family and feels tortured by the terrible dark thoughts that churn through his mind. He ends with a prayer to God asking for help to endure and to let the family be restored and see each other at peace again. Yitzhak newfound religious intensity is evident here in this direct prayer to God.

Interpretive Summary – Friday (Erev Shabbat), January 7, 1916, Hubyn Pershyi

It is Friday afternoon before the Sabbath begins. Yitzhak berates himself for leaving the home of Yehezkel Burshtak and heading early to the home of Shlomo Burshtak where he sleeps. Normally, he explains, he eats the Friday evening Sabbath meal with Yehezkel’s family and then makes his way to the home of Shlomo. But this Friday, it is extremely muddy, dark and cold and “impossible to walk at night with galoshes.” Yitzhak decides to leave for Shlomo’s home while it is still day light and eat the Sabbath meal there. He prefers staying at Shlomo’s home because those who stay with Yehezkel go to sleep early. Since Sabbath rules forbid a Jew from lighting or extinguishing fire, a gentile woman comes early to the household on Friday night and extinguishes the candelabra. With no light in the dead of winter, Yitzhak can’t read and write and must go to bed early. He lies awake a long time, tortured by his thoughts. At Shlomo’s home, by contrast, they do not go to bed early and Yitzhak can stay awake reading and writing later. For these reasons, Yitzhak headed to Shlomo’s home that day.

After arriving at Shlomo’s home, however, Yitzhak second guesses himself, afraid he insulted Yehezel’s family by leaving before the Sabbath meal. And he feels everyone at Shlomo’s home eyeing him angrily, he thinks, for having come early. Yitzhak’s can’t find his place here. “When I come here, I am sorry I left there. I go there, and it seems to me that it is better here.” One suspects that Yitzhak is projecting the feelings of displeasure onto the Burshtak brothers and their families, and he evidently doesn’t feel comfortable voicing his fears or emotions to learn what they are really feeling. As a guest for an extended time in their homes, and dependent on their good will, it is clear that Yitzhak feels like he is walking on eggshells and doesn’t share his feelings except in his diary.

“How terrible for children exiled from their father’s table,” he writes quoting a midrash from the Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 3a) he has cited before. The original context refers to God, the Father, and the exiled children of Israel following the destruction of the Temple. Before for the War, Yitzhak thought of exile as living outside the Land of Israel. Now, during the War and his displacement, he thinks of exile from his home and family.

Yitzhak has been working on a poem about such feelings of exile since mid-October when he first mentioned the poem “In a Foreign Country.” Here he quotes a few additional lines from this poem which has not survived. The lines mourn the loss of his home and wonder if the loss is forever.

Interpretive Summary – Wednesday night, January 12, 1916, Hubyn Pershyi

This week brought comforting news from Yitzhak’s hometown as well as news of a close friend from Mlynov who had also been displaced and now was now staying in nearby in Berestechko. In addition, Yitzhak had a chance meeting with a former acquaintance who was passing through town. Why all of these heart-felt events happened in a single week is not clear, though perhaps there was more movement on the roads bringing new people by Hubyn where Yitzhak was living. The excitement of the week prompted Yitzhak to wonder hopefully whether these were positive signs that peace will arrive soon.

The news from Mlynov, Yitzhak's hometown, arrived via a military official who was stationed in Mlynov and was apparently passing through Hubyn. Yitzhak does not indicate how he met the official or whether they had a lengthy conversation. However, Yitzhak learned from the official that his home had not been destroyed as Yitzhak had feared. The news thoroughly warmed his heart though the moment was short-lived.

In addition to the news about his home, Yitzhak learned that Yermeyahu Maisler, a close friend and kindred spirit of his, was in Berestechko, which was only 31 km (19 mi) from Hubyn. The discovery came about when Yitzhak was chatting with one of the men from Berestechko who was staying overnight in Hubyn. The man indicated that a displaced young man and his brother from Mlynov were staying with him in Berestechko. As the man described the pair, Yitzhak realized that the brother was his close friend Yermeyahu. Yitzhak aches to get together with him but for reasons that are not clear here he concludes that it is impossible to travel to see him. He holds out hope that perhaps he will be able to exchange letters with him.

As if those two momentous moments were not enough, Yitzhak bumped into another acquaintance who was passing through town. The encounter occurred when Yitzhak was teaching the young girl Nehama at the Bortnik home when a wagon passed by the window. The other daughter, Zahava Bortnik (the young woman who was earlier Yitzhak’s love interest) saw the wagon through the window and commented that the wagon driver was Jewish. Intrigued, Yitzhak went to speak to the man and when he got close, he immediately recognized that the man dressed as a coachman was his acquaintance, Shimon Berger, an interesting young man who studied in the Yiddish yeshiva, whom Yitzhak met in Dubna at one point. Berger was on his way to Lutsk and didn’t have time to chat with Yitzhak for long, but he promised to return that way and spend a few hours with him catching up.

By the time Yitzhak sat down and wrote this diary entry on Wednesday night, his anguish and gloom had returned. Bad rumors arrived concerning the Jews in Baranivka, the place where his parents and siblings were. What those rumors were Yitzhak does not say. “God of Mercy,” he prays, “Give us and them strength to bear all of it safely! Put an end to this terrible destruction!”