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Lang "Rebellion Raged Within Me" (1948)
Contributed by Sam Stabler

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Father had lived in Chicago during his first, brief stay in America. My mother's brother... was living there, and so were other relatives, pioneers who had blazed a trail from Korosotyshev to the metropolis of the Middle West. The dominant figure of the group was Aunt Yente Chave.

[Aunt Yente] Chave interpreted America to countless Jewish immigrants. She refused to encourage their longing for the old country. "Everybody should run away from Russia," she told them, indignantly; "everyone should come to America. What did you have in Russia?" she would ask. "Pogroms you had! Why don't you read the papers and see for yourself? So, you don't like America? Woe is me and woe is Columbus!"

For $4.50 a month Aunt Yente Chave rented rooms for us in the basement of the house on Morgan street in which she lived, and she also found for us an unsteady table, some lame chairs, a rusty bed, and an ancient sofa.

The basement was divided in two, and we lived in the part towards the street. The front room had a barred window, through which we could see only the feet of passers-by and the rats that thronged under the wooden sidewalk. The second room was the kitchen and in it was a smoky stove. Then there was a half room, like a cave dug into a black cliff, and the bed was placed there, near the windowless wall. The other half of the basement contained the toilet and the coal bins, which were infested with rats as big as cats. When the tenants came to get coal, they had to fight the rats, which fled towards our apartment. Mother, who was very unwell, lived in dread of the rats.

Aunt Yente Chave wanted to know what I did at Hull House, and when she heard that I was connected with a dance group, she cocked her head and put on an expression of deep significance as she always did when she was investigating sins "So that's it!" she said "No good will come of her!"

Seething with rage, I ran to tell Jane Addams [the famous American pragmatist philosopher, and co-founder of Hull House]. After listening patiently to my story, she agreed to talk with Aunt Yente Chave. When these two met, the contrast was magnificent. They were both strong-willed women, but their backgrounds were utterly different. Behind Aunt Yente Chave were generations of men and women who had suffered every kind of hardship and persecution in order to live in the way they believed to be right. To her, the least derivation from the established code threatened the whole structure. Jane Adams, on the other hand, the product of generations of freedom and security, believed that standards of conduct could and should be based on reason.

Hardly speaking the English language, the matriarch from the Russian Pale understood the lady from Cedarville, Illinois, and made herself understood. "Traditions of the home" said Aunt Yente Chave, "and commands of the parents must be the basis of the training of the young."

"The young must be fee to experiment" Miss Addams replied. "They must learn to understand the meaning of right and wrong. Life should be interesting and joyful for them."

"Ah," said the matriarch "we have joy in our homes. We have our celebrations our weddings. And we know the needs of girls. First, they need loving, watchful parents. Then early marriage and a happy home of their own. I have daughters, so I know this."

"I cannot speak from experience," Miss Addams interrupted. "I have not daughters."

"Only boys?"

"No children at all."

"God have mercy."

"I have never married."

"So, you don't know nothing at all."

It was funny, and yet it was sad. Poor Aunt Yente Chave knew how easily a family could be destroyed, its members set to wandering along the highways and byways of exile, never safe from persecution, never secure. What greater opportunity could America offer her than the chance to build an abiding home for her tribe for generations to come? How could she tolerate the least weakening of her power, which was the essential instrument of the only kind of survival she could understand.

Jane Addams could not budge Aunt Yente Chave, but she convinced my parents, and I was grudgingly permitted to return to Hull House. Buy by now, my eyes were dazzled by a brighter vision of freedom...

haggadah Section: Kadesh
Source: From Lucy Robin Lang's "Tommorrow Is Beautiful" (1948)

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