The Diary of Yitzhak Lamdan
(Interpretive Summaries of Each Entry)

Interpretive Summary – [November 8, 1916] Wednesday night, 13th of [the month of] Cheshvan (5657), in the 4th hour [4 pm], Baranovka

Late afternoon at 4:00 pm, as the sun was setting at this time of year, Yitzhak writes a second diary entry. In Baranovka, the sun is already setting and the next day in the Jewish calendar has commenced, hence the date in the Jewish calendar has changed from the 12th to the 13th of Cheshvan. Yitzhak’s mother remains on her deathbed, and the movements of her hands seem to beg for help, but there is none. Her moans penetrate the heart, the sounds of a struggling soul. Yitzhak’s pain, grief, and existential despair comes pouring out in words on paper, though he doesn’t break down emotionally.

Yitzhak questions how God could have done this to the family, taken their beloved mother who sacrificed so much of her own life for her children. He wonders how he can keep from going crazy. His mother’s pending death revives the existential questions about life and death Yitzhak has asked in his diary on earlier occasions, triggered by the War. What is the purpose of life, he wonders, of all the labor and effort that people invest in living.

the mystery of the world is forever hidden – – – there is nothing! There is nothing! – – zero, zero, zero and the mind is confused, the head hurts, and heart drowns in a sea of grief and sorrow – and there is no rest, no comfort, no hope – and I – a wretched creature lost among all the many lost souls and drifters in the ugly world, and in these ugly empty lives.

Interpretive Summary – Friday day (eve of the Sabbath), November 10, 1916, Baranovka

Yitzhak cannot bring himself to do more than write a few lines in his grief-stricken state over his mother’s terminal illness. It has been more than 24 hours since he last wrote in his diary and his mother apparently is still clinging to life.

Interpretive Summary – Sunday, November 12, 1916, Baranovka

When Yitzhak picks up pen again on Sunday morning, his mother has already passed away. Yitzhak is still reeling from shock and disbelief. She passed away on Friday night (the Sabbath night), at 9:30 pm on the 14th of Cheshvan. This is Yitzhak’s first diary entry since her passing.

Writing Sunday morning, Yitzhak begins to recount the events of the last 36 hours as his mother was expiring. “I am not able to further reconcile myself to this,” he writes, “or said more correctly, I not able to believe this terrible tragedy. It it really so?” Just two days earlier, he recall speaking with her, giving her water to drink, fixing her bed. Now when he enters the bedroom he can still hear her calls, and he imagines that when he turns down the blanket, he will see her sleeping. But no, the bed is empty. She is gone.

Yitzhak shares a bit about his mother’s last few hours. During the day on Friday (“Sabbath eve”) the family had a premonition that the end was drawing near. Yitzhak indicates he was more depressed that day than ever before in his life. His mother was already sleeping and he watched her labored breathing, Yitzhak choked on his tears. It was so difficult that he was unable to write more than a few lines in his diary that day.

After the Sabbath began Friday at sunset, and before their Sabbath evening meal, Yitzhak, his father, and his sister Hansa went to his mother’s bedside to give her a bit of milk. In a heartbreaking scene, Yitzhak describes how he kindly put a tiny piece of sugar in her mouth to sweeten the milk for her. She was so weak by this point that she couldn’t hold the sugar in her mouth and it got caught in her throat. With little moisture in her mouth, she began to choke on the sugar and turn red. Her eyes lifted upward and she had a deathly appearance. Yitzhak was so alarmed that he fled the room and went to the kitchen where he burst into a terrible wailing that sounded like a wounded animal. He must have thought that he had helped along his mother’s death. Other people apparently came running with alarm, but it turned out that Yitzhak’s mother was still alive. Their spirits revived a little but “just a little, for did we not know the bitter and horrible truth, that if not now, then later…”

With the end near at hand, Yitzhak’s nieces, the daughters of his sister Heni, assembled. At this point, Yitzhak breaks off the diary entry which he was writing Sunday morning. He adds a footnote the next day indicating that various reasons prevented him from finishing the entry on Sunday which he would now complete on Monday.

Interpretive Summary – Monday, November 13, 1916, during the seven days of mourning (shiva), Baranivka

In a diary entry that is simultaneous moving, existential and theological, Yitzhak continues his account of his mother’s deathbed scene and funeral before shifting gears to revisit a difficult decision he and his brother Moshe made during the previous summer. The diary entry, written more than 36 hours since his mother’s burial, is one of the longest he has written to date.

Yitzhak begins by picking up where he left off in his diary yesterday, on Friday night when his mother was still alive and when, at the urging of his nieces, he went to their home to sleep. He says, “all of us were there,” though he specifically mentions his father sleeping on the couch, and the presence also of his two sisters, Hansa and Heni. Yitzhak’s eldest sister, Riba, was still in Kiev where she was living. Yitzhak does not mention his younger sister, Malcah, or his older brother Moshe though both were likely there too.

Apparently, Yitzhak’s mother passed away about an hour after Yitzhak went into sleep. Yitzhak woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to enter the house where his mother was bedridden. His niece, Belumah Kantor, dissuaded him from going in, telling him there were already enough people there and that he should go back to sleep. It appears that his mother had already passed away, and Belumah was trying to give him a bit more of cushion before he learned of his mother’s death.

Before sunrise Yitzhak awakened and approached the house again. The face of his sister Hansa was all blotchy from crying, but Yitzhak didn’t grasp the significance until he saw his father, who was slumped in a chair, confirm the turn of events with a nod of his head. A kind of paralysis grabbed Yitzhak, and he walked back and forth in the kitchen in a kind of out of body experience. His father called Yitzhak over to see his mother. But Yitzhak couldn’t do it. When dawn rose, his father instructed him to go to the house of prayer to say the mourner’s Kaddish for his mother. About the same time, Yitzhak’s sister, Heni, entered the house also unaware of what had occurred. When she saw their mother covered by a sheet, she screamed and tore out some of her hair in anguish and threw it across the room. Yitzhak was frightened by the action and worried she would take her life, though his father consoled her. Terrible wailing filled the house. For Yitzhak, “the worm of pain sucked and sucked.”

The Sabbath day passed in crying and wailing, as the family waited until Saturday night, to the end of Sabbath, when Jewish law permitted burial and mourning to begin. On Sabbath afternoon, Yitzhak went to the house of prayer to say the afternoon prayers (minha). When he returned home, preparation was already underway for the “accompaniment,” the term used for the funeral rites. The bulk of the preparation waited until the end of the Sabbath, when those assisting the family purified the body (tahara) and dressed the body in shrouds (tachrichtim). At that point, it would have been appropriate for Yitzhak to enter the bedroom to see his mother’s face for the last time. But he sat crying in the kitchen and couldn’t bring himself to do so despite his father’s encouragement. However, when the family members joined together to perform the ritual tearing of garments (keriah), Yitzhak managed to join them, though the pain and grief was so intense that he hit his head with his fist.

When the body was carried to the cemetery, Yitzhak joined as one of the pall bearers. There he watched in terrible silence, “a man who already emptied the well of his tears,” as the men dug the grave and lay “my beloved mother” in the ground. “What is this, how can I let unfamiliar men abuse my beloved mother like this,” he thought at the time.

Describing the cemetery scene prompts Yitzhak to shift from a straightforward narration of events to a mix of anguished emotions and existential thoughts about death. Multiple times he repeats variations on the phrase that his beloved mother is gone, still trying to assimilate what had happened. No longer will he hear her groans, he writes, no longer will he hear her call for him with his nickname, “Itzi.” After they returned home from the cemetery, the family began the rituals that accompany the seven days of mourning (shiva). Yitzhak mentions removing the shoes and sitting on low benches. Saturday night Yitzhak slept fitfully. The next morning (Sunday) the prayer quorum (minyan) gathered. “Yes, the mother is already dead! The beloved mother is already gone,” Yitzhak writes again in disbelief.

At this point in his diary entry, Yitzhak shifts to his existential angst about death, a topic that he has written about before, only now it has a new immediacy and intensity about it:

My God! My God! How crazy is your world, and in my mind the new age old questions gnaw, questions of life and death, that all the philosophers and poets from the beginning of time until now didn’t pass over in silence, but their solutions were not realized by even one, and it continues to torment the brains and to poison hearts. This mystery remains hidden – and has no solution. But all you prove is that there is no solution to this mystery – the more it pains our heart, the more we will feel sad and try to find the hidden solution – – – life... death... what are they? What is their secret?

Following this reflection, Yitzhak shift gears again – this time in a surprising fashion – turning to a religious/theological theme and specifically acknowledging that there is a divine supervision and direction of human action. This shift is surprising because in the many times that Yitzhak called out to God in his diary during the War (in diaries 1 and 2), he never once asserted that God gets intimately involved in human decision making or that what was happening to him was divinely directed. What prompts him to say so now is his mother’s death and a difficult decision that he and his brother reached during the past summer when the Russians began their summer offensive.

Yitzhak’s look back to the previous summer fills in a bit of missing detail about what happened to him and his brother, Moshe, during the Brusilov offensive of 1916. As the Russian military forced the Austro-Hungarians to retreat from the area around Hubyn Pershyi, the brothers faced a choice. They could have joined the majority of Jews who Yitzhak says retreated west with the Austrians to seek safety living in Austria, or they could have instead have headed east into Russia to rejoin their family in Baranivka. Obviously, they chose the latter. But apparently the brothers had a difficult time making the decision at the time and they second guessed their decision several times since arriving in Baranivka. In retrospect, their decision apparently perplexed them. Why did they return to the dangers of Russia when they could have been safe in Austria?

Thankfully, Yitzhak concludes, divine supervision influenced their decision and directed them east to rejoin their family. In this way, the boys were able to fulfil their mother’s dying wish to see her sons again. As Yitzhak explains, their mother had surgery during the previous summer in Kiev where their sister Riba lived. She realized then that she had only a year to live and her final wish was to see her sons one more time. The boys, of course, knew nothing about this when they were still in Hubyn Pershyi and made their decision to return to the Russian interior. God, Yitzhak concludes, must have been active in their decision-making. How horrible it would have been to learn of their mother’s death later and not to have fulfilled her final wish.

Yitzhak does not mention his brother’s name at all when writing about their decision-making process, suggesting there may still have been lingering tension between them. Nor does Yitzhak specify the dangers he worried about in Baranivka, which lay roughly 155 miles (250 km) east of Hubyn Pershyi and outside the immediate combat zone. Yet in November 1916 the area formed part of the unstable rear of the Brusilov Offensive, where shifting front lines, heavy troop movements, requisitions, and persistent rumors of renewed fighting created an atmosphere of constant uncertainty. For a Jewish civilian like Yitzhak, this insecurity was intensified by the recent memory of expulsions and the continuing suspicion of Jews on the part of the Russian military, making danger feel real even without active combat nearby. The boys may also have feared, legitimately, that they would be conscripted into the Russian army. After the Russian offensive stalled in late summer 1916, those in the rear could not know whether Austro-Hungarian and German forces might counterattack. At the same time, shortages of food and goods were worsening across the empire, and political tensions—visible, for example, in increasingly critical speeches in the Duma—contributed to a broader sense of instability that preceded the upheavals of early 1917.

Interpretive Summary – Interpretive Summary – Wednesday, November 22, 1916, Baranivka

It is the 12th day since Yitzhak’s mother died on Friday night, Nov. 10th. After writing two diary entries immediately following her death, Yitzhak hasn’t written again for 9 days. During that period of mourning, he found himself unable to write and when he did sit down to write, he found everything incomprehensible and couldn’t pick up the pen. Then on Thursday last week he fell sick and was bedridden with influenza, no doubt brought on in part by his emotional state. He was so sick he couldn’t even go to the house of prayer to say the mourner’s Kaddish. Finally, yesterday he began to feel better and now finds himself able to write again.

Looking back on this period, Yitzhak indicates that he has not cried since the night of his mother’s funeral and in fact feels no need for tears now. He is simply silent and in a strange state of mind that he doesn’t understand and can’t describe. Silent is the word that Yitzhak uses several times to describe his state of mind, suggesting an emotional numbness following the loss.

Shifting gears, Yitzhak writes about a letter he received from his girlfriend, Zahava (“Z. B.”), on the Sabbath. Faithful to the Sabbath rules, he stuck it in a pocket and didn’t open it. Anyway, he figured that delaying the reading would help increase his interest about what it said. When he finally opened it Saturday night after the Sabbath, he didn’t read it carefully because of his illness. The next day he reread it properly.

Zahava wrote the letter in what Yitzhak describes as her distinctive tone. Every line burst with her effort to express her professed love for him. She didn’t know yet about his mother’s suffering or her death. In the letter, Zavava also replied to an earlier letter Yitzhak sent in which he worried that the current external situation in Russia might keep them separated forever. In reply, Zahava dismisses his worries and assures him that wherever she is, her love will remain steadfast and that she knows his love will be as well. In the meantime, she implores him to send her some poems and if he does, she will send him a special gift. Yitzhak guesses that the gift is a photo of herself which he acknowledges would please him very much. But the thought of writing her a letter and telling her about what has transpired with his mother, feels like “splitting the Red Sea,” not to mention going to the effort of trying to copy poems for her. Yitzhak is still too tired and too depressed to marshal the effort.

In the meantime, Yitzhak mentions that his “shattered” father and “old tired” aunt headed to a temporary home in Zviahel, about 23 miles south of Baranovka. Yitzhak doesn’t say why they headed to the unfamiliar city, one that Yitzhak says he can’t bear, but one suspects their travel to Zviahel has to do with the “shortages of everything,” as Yitzhak describes their situation, undoubtedly due to the failure of the government during the War. Seeing his broken and depressed father tears at his heart and prompts him to remember the dozens of years his father and family were living a serene idyllic life in Mlynov before the War. That idyll is long gone.

“Our family?” Yitzhak writes. It hardly feels like a family anymore with his mother gone, and his father and aunt in Zviahel. Yitzhak’s sister Hansa is still there in Baranovka with him in the home of their sister, Heni. His younger sister, Malcah, however, is in Kiev healing her broken hand and staying with their older sister Ribah. Yitzhak’s brother, Moshe, whom he refers to for the first time in his diary with his affectionate nickname of “Masha,” is wandering someplace in Ukraine. Yitzhak suspects that soon his own situation will be clarified and that he too will be someplace “far-flung” from Baranivka. After reading Yitzhak’s diary entries from prior period in Hubyn, when he longed repeatedly to be reunited with his parents and family, and when he often described his idyllic life in Mlynov, this fragmentation of the family so soon after their reunification is quite heartbreaking and profound.

Interpretive Summary – Sunday, November 26, 1916, the new month of Kislev, Baranivka

Yitzhak continues to fill in details about activities during the prior week. Although last Wednesday, when he wrote his diary entry, he indicated he didn’t have enough strength to respond to a letter from his sweetheart, Zahava, he apparently did muster enough effort after writing that diary entry. “While it was still Wednesday,” he tells us here, he wrote a letter to Zahava narrating the events surrounding his mother’s illness and death. That was the entire content of the letter, and obviously he didn’t copy any of his poems for her as she requested.

This letter was still in Yitzhak’s pocket four days later when he wrote this diary entry. He had hoped to send it with someone to the town of Zviahel to deposit in the postal service there. Yitzhak didn’t want to drop the letter in the local postal box in Baranivka because he knew that the local official serves as a military censor and opens the mail to spot letters written in Hebrew. Jews were still suspected of being spies for the enemy.

Yitzhak has some regret about his decision to hold onto the letter since he doesn’t know anyone traveling to Zviahel soon and he fears the delay will cause an interruption in the exchange of letters with his sweetheart Zahava, idealizing her as having “the heart is the heart of a caring and loving sister.” The letters with Zahava he anticipates will bolster his hurting heart and console his “grawing sadness” over the death of his mother, a sadness that besieges him and eats away at his heart and from which he hides admist his papers and writings. Apart from the letters from Zahava “what remains for me from everything [that matters].” “If only,” he concludes, “I was together with Zahava!”

Interpretive Summary – Monday, November 27th, 1916, Baranivka

December 1916

Interpretive Summary – Wednesday, December 6, Baranivka

Yitzhak had pain in his teeth earlier in the week. After two disturbed nights of sleep, Yitzhak woke up hearing a knocking at his window. “Who is knocking?” he asked. The voice that answered was his father’s. Initially Yitzhak thought that his father must have returned from his trip to Mlynov, but it turned out that his father was just on his way to catch the train to Mlynov in Polonne and had taken a detour to Baranivka on behalf of Yitzhak’s sister, Heni. But Heni had already departed for a trip of her own. The purpose of her trip is not indicated nor her destination, though Yitzhak gave her a letter to deliver to their brother, Moshe, in response to a letter Yitzhak had just received the day before.

Since Heni was not home, Yitzhak’s father had wasted money and time on this detour to Baranivka. In the morning he obtained a ride on a wagon to Polonne and when he left, he wished Yitzhak well in a quavering voice that tore at Yitzhak’s heart. Seeing broken and dispirited father, he cries out to God, “How long will we suffer this way?” The destruction of the family, with his mother’s death, and his father’s effort to find some means of supporting Yitzhak and the family, weigh on Yitzhak and make the specific details of his personal life seem insignificant. It is much tougher to deal with the family situation, Yitzhak writes, than his own personal suffering. In the meantime, he is waiting expectantly for a letter from Zahava, but so far none has arrived.

Yitzhak ends the diary entry because he has to hurry to the house of prayer to say mourner’s Kaddish. He therefore doesn’t have time to start writing about a topic that he wants to tackle, namely, the energy or power of his literary oeuvre and the material he has accumulated recently for writing. We don’t know exactly what he means here but the enigmatic statement suggests that his literary endeavors are going better and we can only hope that he comes back to this topic and tells us more.

Interpretive Summary – Monday night, December 11, 1916, Baranivka

The thirty-day period of mourning, called “sheloshim,” has ended since Yitzhak’s mother passed away. The end of this period signals that a mourner is leaving the heightened period of loss and beginning to return to the normal course of life. Yitzhak acknowledges that his wound from her death is beginning to “scab over” though it still bleeds periodically. The end of the thirty-day period of mourning prompts Yitzhak to reflect on and valorize his mother’s character, and his intense feelings of loss and inadequacy. At the same time, he provides additional details about the progression of his mother’s illness that were not evident previously. The feelings come out jumbled in this entry, moving back and forth from his loss and sadness at the loss, to the progression of his mother’s illness and her character. Mixed in too are Yitzhak’s existential feelings about the brutality of death.

As he has previously, Yitzhak here underscores his mother’s full devotion to her children. What is most distressing, Yitzhak writes, is that his mother experienced dying far from their native land and birthplace, and without the comfort of their family home. Even when she knew that she was on her deathbed, she still displayed great strength of character. She prayed to be freed from her suffering, not only for her own sake, but also for the sake of her children. And though her words were difficult for Yitzhak, he was also awed that she still worried about her children in her final days and moments. “I know I am going to die,” she told them, and that after some time you will be consoled, and everything will return to normal. “How sublime is the heart of the mother!” Yitzhak writes, startled by the strength of his mother in her final moments and recognizing that a sacred calm had come over her in the end.

Yitzhak’s mother was not equanimous like this during the “beginning months” of her illness, Yitzhak tells us, suggesting that she had been ill for a good period of time and that she may already have been suffering when Yitzhak first made his way from Hubyn to Baranovka sometime in the summer of 1916. In the earlier stage of her illness, when she still hoped to recover, she cried a great deal and mourned as she feared death. Even the greatest writer, Yitzhak writes, could not capture the profound words she said during this time, nor did Yitzhak didn’t bother to try.

His mother’s nobility at the end facing death makes Yitzhak feel insignificant, like a sinner and guilty before such strength of character. In this moment of reflection, Yitzhak mentions the name of his beloved mother and asks her forgiveness, knowing that he is too much a sinner and unclean from life to mention the name of one so beloved, holy and pure as her.

Interpretive Summary – Monday, December 18, 1916, Baranivka

In this lengthy diary entry, Yitzhak discusses his current frustrations in Baranivka, the recent letters he received from his brother Moshe and his sweetheart, Zahava, the hopeful news circulating related to the prospects of peace, and the surge in creativity he is now experiencing. A week has passed since his last diary entry (Dec. 11th) and his mood is markedly less bleak. Perhaps, the end of the thirty day period of mourning for his mother, the arrival of Zahava’s letter, and the news of a German call for peace negotiations, account for this shift in his emotions.

On the one hand, Yitzhak still feels frustrated remaining in Baranovka, seeing himself as a burden to his sister, Heni. His father still has not returned from his trip back to Mlynov in which he was seeking some kind of work for Yitzhak. For now, Yitzhak is still stuck in Baranovka with nothing to do. The letter from his brother Moshe, which his sister Heni brought home from her trip away, adds salt to the wound. The letter exhibits just how out of touch his brother Moshe is with his feelings about being stuck in Baranovka. On the other hand, it is clear that in the last week Yitzhak has recovered some of his creative juice though he is still frustrated that he doesn’t have enough time to work on the ideas he is accumulated for his writing and nor for studying European literature and languages, where had found philosophical gems buried unlike anything in “our literature.”

Yitzhak’s time is spent in his sister’s store, though it is not clear if he is working there or just hanging out. He indicates he is reading the newspaper to keep abreast of the political situation. Yitzhak has not written for a while about the general War situation. But on December 12th, six days before he wrote this diary entry, Germany sent a “note” via the neutral countries, proposing that it was time for peace negotiations. Many people were skeptical of Germany’s true intent, but the Entente countries were taking the proposal seriously. Yitzhak is cautiously optimistic. But deep in his heart he wonders if the War might really come to an end soon. While his days are taken up with time in the store and reading the newspaper, he has little time left to read or write. The days are short because of winter, and everyone goes to sleep early due to the pricey cost of kerosene.

In addition to the letter from his brother, a letter finally and somewhat miraculously reached Yitzhak from his sweetheart Zahava. The letter was written in a mix of Hebrew and Yiddish and had been opened. But somehow it had slipped through the postal censors having being folded into a Russian letter. Apparently, Zahava had written two earlier letters that never reached him. Yitzhak quotes several sentences from the letter. Zahava expresses empathy that Yitzhak had not received a letter from her for three weeks. She knows how hard it is to wait for a reply to her own letter. She calls him her darling, and by his nickname, Yitzikil, and expresses her wish to be lifted on the wings to fly to him and hug him tight. The sentences call up in Yitzhak’s mind an image of Zahva, sitting at a table, biting her lip, and looking out into space. Yitzhak can feel the beating of her heart. Surprisingly, one of Zahava’s empathetic sentences annoys Yitzhak. She tries to fortify him: “your faithful sister makes you swear not to let bitter anguish bore into your head. You are still young, and for my sake you need to be strong and not despair if you love me.” Zahava is clearly responding to the mood of Yitzhak’s earlier letter in which he no doubt expressed his bleak mood following his mother’s death and his despair living in Baranovka. But Yitzhak is having none of that. Perhaps because in the past week his mood has improved, or because he can’t acknowledge a need for such comfort, he declares he is beyond the feelings of a typical person:

Yes, my darling tries with all her strength to fortify me, how naive! She thinks that the horizon of my outlook, and the sphere of my thoughts is narrow and regular, and the anguish is normal and common. She doesn’t know that the horizon of my outlook on life in general in fact continues to expand, because my thoughts continue to ascend upwards and gradually I leave the normal sphere and aspire to something more lofty and elevated, something not evident to the normal eye… and even my experience of despair will not be like the sickly despair that typically affects everyone else, but it is completely different – –

Interpretive Summary – Monday night, December 26 [25], 1916, Baranovka (Hanukkah)

A week has passed since Yitzhak’s last diary entry, when there was hope of peace in the air and his own creativity was bubbling. Now, a week later, he is preoccupied with the question of where he will go once he leaves Baranovka, and whether he’ll head back to Lutsk or to Stary Oskol in the interior of Russia, where other Mlynov residents fled from Rovno. Yitzhak strongly prefers to head back to Lutsk, where Zahava is, and where he knows other people. Perhaps he can lodge in the house he and his brother stayed in when they were in Lutsk back in October 1915 (see entry on Oct. 7, 1915). But before making a final decision, Yitzhak is waiting for a response to a letter he sent to Chaikel Weitz, inquiring about the current dangers in Lutsk and the possibility of finding work there. Chaikel Weitz was the son of Abraham Weitz, the head of the Weitz family with whom Yitzhak planned to join in the summer of 1914 in going to the Land of Israel. When Yitzhak and his brother Moshe were in Lutsk back in 1915, when they fled Mlynov and Dubno, Chaikel Weitz was also staying there. Yitzhak now hopes that Chaikel will give Yitzhak some guidance about the viability of returning to Lutsk.

Yitzhak does not say why this decision has become more urgent for him in the last week. We don’t know yet if his father returned from his trip to Mlynov where he was seeking work for Yitzhak, and Yitzhak doesn’t say anything more yet about the German “note” that was published on Dec. 12th and which suggested peace negotiations should take place. Yitzhak passes over in silence the latest political developments: On Dec. 18th the US President, Woodrow Wilson, published a note asking all parties to the War to state their intentions and goals. On Dec. 19th partly in response, the Great Britain’s Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, made a speech rejecting the idea of negotiations without clear terms and declaring that the Allies were fighting for security, restoration of occupied territories, and guarantees against future German aggression. If Yitzhak was still reading the newspapers in his sister’s store, he probably would have known about these developments and perhaps his hopes for Peace may have already been dashed.

In the meantime, Yitzhak received a letter from Zahava reminding him of the early days of their relationship, during Hanukkah a year ago, when they first strolled arm in arm in Hubyn (see Dec. 7, 1915). Now she dreams of him every night. Waking up in the morning she is faced with the difficult realization that he is not there. Zahava’s letter intensifies Yitzhak’s desire to go to Lutsk. He hopes fervently to receive a positive response from Chaikel Weitz about the safety there and the possibility of work. If he gets such a response, he will head there immediately.

Interpretive Summary – Thursday, December 28, 1916, Baranivka

While important political developments continue to provide hope for peace, Yitzhak is still stuck painfully in Baranovka with no immediate prospect for leaving. His father was supposed to be traveling again to seek work for Yitzhak, but Yitzhak learned that as of Tuesday he was still in Novohrad Volinskyi and apparently had not left on his travels. Yitzhak concludes that his own prospects of leaving Baranivka are still weeks away.

In the meantime, Yitzhak is following political developments closely. Every day, he hurries to the market to read the newspapers in the morning and he clearly knows at least the broad outlines of what is going on. In this entry, he mentions “the note” that the American President Woodrow Wilson published on December 18th asking the warring parties to state their intentions and goals. He also knows about the note that Switzerland published on Dec. 23rd just five days earlier, that supports the idea of peace and offers support of its limited forces. Evidently, news of these momentous events were rapidly reaching even the small towns like Baranivka.

These momentous political events, however, are not top of mind for Yitzhak in this diary entry. Instead, he writes at length about the reasons he is so miserable staying where he is and why he is not able to take advantage of his new bubbling creativity and his accumulated ideas for writing. Besides the disorder of the house, which he has written about previously (see Nov. 27, 1916), the venomous personality of his eldest sister Heni takes center stage. In the original diary, the topic has been scratched out with diagonal lines, showing Yitzhak had second thoughts about what he wrote. Indeed, Yitzhak says the topic at hand is not one that he likes writing about, since he feels that a diary should be focused on more important, emotional-spiritual matters and mysteries of the soul. But such themes are impossible to divorce from the issues of daily life.

Yitzhak has harsh words for his eldest sister. In older Hebrew, Yitzhak says, she would have been called “an evil woman.” Today we might say she has a martyr complex. Yitzhak describes her as one of those people who thinks that only she suffers, and that everyone is happy except herself and everyone should pay attention to her situation. She doesn’t want to hear about the losses or suffering of Yitzhak and their other sister Hansa. Rather, she looks for the perfect moment to spill her vitriol on her younger siblings. This is one reason that Yitzhak is not getting as much creative work done as he would like. He is avoiding coming home and then at night when everyone goes to sleep, she growls about anyone using the now expensive kerosene to light the candelabra. Yitzhak is less worried about her impact on him than on his sister Hansa. He knows that he will flee Baranivka as soon as he can. Hansa tais the one taking the brunt of Heni’s vitriol, even though she is serving as Heni’s housekeeper and imposing order on the house. One day, if he lives, Yitzhak promises to come back and improve Hansa’s situation.

Despite all this turmoil, Yitzhak was able to start a few new creative efforts. He sees real progress in his ability and originality, though he admits that he still has not grasped “the essence,” by which he seems to describe the feeling, that writers and other kinds of artists have, that the ultimate or true expression of their creativity remains always beyond their grasp and beyond the latest effort.

January 1917

Interpretive Summary – Monday, January 8, 1917, Baranivka

In this long diary entry, Yitzhak contemplates his pending decision about where to go once he leaves Baranivka. He has two choices. He can either go east back towards Lutsk, where he has been before and where he has friends and acquaintances, or he can go to the interior of Russia, to Stary Oskol in the Kursk district, where a friend or family member named Neta lives. The decision weighs heavily on his mind which may explain why he thought three weeks had passed since his last journal entry. In fact, only a week and a half had elapsed.

Yitzhak’s father still has not returned from Mlynov, so Yitzhak doesn’t yet know whether his father found employment for him there in that area. In the meantime, Yitzhak has received postcards from Zahava and other friends in Lustk about life there, but with tentative and sometimes cryptic advice. Besides exhibiting a natural hesitancy against advising Yitzhak on his decision, the postcards adopt circumlocutions that likely are intended to evade the censors during a time of war. Two postcards arrived from Zavaha. She really wants Yitzhak to come to Lutsk, she writes, but then cryptically references some obstacle that may hamper his journey there, which she will write about in a separate letter. Zahava also indicates that her sister, Miriam, spoke to a family named Kimmelmans who are apparently in Lutsk. They indicated that Yitzhak could earn a good living there, but the main thing is whether he is “totally healthy.”

Totally healthy? There is no indication in any of Yitzhak’s earlier diary entries that he was ill or disabled. Equally cryptic is his response that he is healthy but the “main issue is only whether the air of the city will harm my heath.” The subject of Yitzhak’s health thus appears to be a coded reference to his risk of military conscription and written in such a way to evade military censors who were opening and reading mail. Yitzhak was 19 years old at this time and old enough to be mobilized by the Russian army which still controlled Lutsk. Throughout the War, young men evaded the draft by faking ill health in various ways or by maiming themselves. Some starved themselves, swallowed chemicals that would affect their hearts, cut off their trigger fingers, and so on. If Yitzhak was totally healthy, he was at risk of being mobilized.

Though Lutsk in late 1916 and early 1917 was now behind the front lines and relatively safe from direct combat, the city still much closer to the Eastern front than Baranivka, where Yitzhak current was living. The risk of a young healthy Russian man being noticed and conscripted, or alternatively even suspected as a spy, was much greater there than in the interior of Russia, Yitzhak’s alternative choice.

No wonder that Zahava writes that though she wants him to come, he should consider his decision well. She is not a prophetess, she writes, and she can’t assure him everything will be fine in Lutsk. He should consider the matter well, so he doesn’t later blame others later for his decision, she tells him. Zahava also perplexes Yitzhak when she writes enigmatically about needing a travel document to travel to Lutsk where they are already accepted. “Do you understand?” she writes. “But it is better to do so without any questions.” Unfortunately, her words are so circuitous that even Yitzhak can’t make heads or tails of her caution. So he writes her another postcard asking for clarification.

Yitzhak also receives postcards from friends named Miriam and Yankel Kranz. How Yitzhak knows them is not known. Miriam’s advice is like Zahava’s. She wants him to come to Lutsk and tells him that he can earn a decent wage there, “if you feel completely healthy.” Even Yitzhak is perplexed by the precise meaning of “complete health.” Are they saying I really need to have something wrong with me to evade conscription, he wonders, or is it good enough if I have something in my pocket I can use? Yankel is the one writer who actually advises Yitzhak he should come to Lutsk and indicates that he can earn 100 rubles a month working there.

Yitzhak doesn’t feel that he can rely on the ambiguous information from the postcards he has received and wants to hear from Chaikel Weitz before he makes a final decision. Unfortunately, Chaikel, has not written to him yet.

In the meantime, Yitzhak outlines the factors in his decision and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of each of the two routes he might take. Lutsk has four significant advantages: friends and acquaintances who will help him get on his feet, 2) being close to Zahava, 3) help from friends finding work and 4) not being so far from his family. Stroskol far in the interior of Russia lacks all these advantages. Of course, Lutsk has only one disadvantage, and it is a weighty one: “the constant terrible fear due to my abnormal state, in a place where it is possible to draw too much suspicion.” Leaving this fear behind is the main advantage Stroskol has: “one can hope that there I will feel good regarding the ‘key issue’…” In addition, Yitzhak wonders whether being in an unfamiliar distant world will potentially stimulate his literary creativity.

Speaking of creativity, Yitzhak indicates that he has continued to experience intense creativity in his imagination, though he has written very little. Two sets of emotions are war within him, he tells us, brought on by the uncertainty of the decision he is facing. Every passing day feels like he is flitting away his youth without the pleasure of life and delight he should be experiencing as a young man. He mourns that he is separated from other young men and women and not experiencing life in the moment. At the same time, he knows that his personality blocks his ability to enjoy life this way. Even when he just pretends to be happy, the image of his mother on her deathbed appears before his eyes and he feels guilty for wanting to indulge in pleasure and enjoyment. In the end, Yitzhak is confident this current clash of emotions will subside once the decision he now faces is resolved and he returns to Lutsk or heads to the interior.

In his final reflection in this entry, Yitzhak turns his attention to the very nature of his creativity and explains why he has been so creative recently. While he recognizes the value of routine and restriction to improve his character in general, his creativity works completely differently. Through a variety of metaphors, Yitzhak captures the way he lifts the constraints on his imagination and feelings. Like a bee that flies from flower to flower to gather pollen to make honey, he lets his mind and emotions loose to wander freely. Anything attracts his attention and offers some “moisture” that can slake his thirst. At times he is up in the blue of the sky and then just as quickly he is down in the dark of the abyss. He feels he as if he is searching among a myriad web of roads and paths, sometimes going up and sometimes down, sometimes crying, sometimes singing. It is just this kind of unleashed freedom of his mind that stimulates his recent bout of creativity.

Interpretive Summary – [January 10, 1917] Wednesday, 17th [should be the 16th] of [the month of] Tevet [5677], Baranovka

Yitzak provides a short addendum to his diary entry two days earlier. His father still hasn’t returned from Mlynov, nor has he received the response he so eagerly awaits from Chaikel Weitz. So Yitzhak dashed off three postcards. Though he does not say to whom they are directed, though he likely sent them to Zahava and her sister. In one postcard, he requests that if Chaikel doesn’t have time to respond or can’t for some other reason, that he should dictate his response orally and Zahava should write down the answer. In the other postcard, he wrote about his health and requested that “she” respond fully and transparently to his questions this time.

Interpretive Summary – Tuesday, January 16, 1917, Baranivka

In one of the longer diary entries to date (four printed pages), Yitzhak recounts the experiences of the last week sequentially, though the most important event, the one that occurred on Sunday night and that undoubtedly informs the deep sadness of this entry, is the return of his father from Mlynov.

Yitzhak says nothing about the conditions his father found in Mlynov and whether their family home and belongings survived so far. However, when Yitzhak discussed his plan to return to Lutsk, his father informed him that such a choice was impossible now because a travel permit could no longer be obtained to travel there, undoubtedly due to concerns related to the war. Instead, the decision was made that Yitzhak would travel east to Kiev where his older sister Riba lives with her family, and based on the conditions and situation there, he will decide where to head from there.

The trip will likely begin following the coming Sabbath. Yitzhak will be accompanied by Hinda Kantor (a sister-in-law of his sister Heni), who will assist Yitzhak navigating a train, an experience he has not had yet in his entire life. Her presence will also reduce the danger of Yitzhak traveling alone and being questioned by military authorities at a time when civilian travel by train has been drastically curtailed due to the movement of troops and supplies. Rumors are circulating that the next military “call-up” is going to be postponed, and Yitzhak hopes that he too will be among those saved in this way.

Even before his father returned home, Yitzhak experienced a deep foreboding which began on Friday and continued on the Sabbath. He ruminated about the devasting impact on his relationship with Zahava if he had to head east rather than back to Lutsk where his sweetheart was. The thought brought on intense grief that the distance will end their relationship and he will lose the only young woman with whom he had a real friendship and truly loved.

On Sunday, before his father arrived home, Yitzhak received a postcard from Zahava in which she shared her fantasies about Yitzhak coming to Lutsk and kissing his face. The irony is not lost on Yitzhak now, these few days later as he is writing in his diary, that her fantasies are now in vain. He is not returning to Lutsk but heading in the other direction. Her fantasies are excusable though, Yitzhak concludes. “Should she not dream?” How can she not dream when even he, Yitzhak, who is so pragmatic and distrusts the future, also fantasizes about her, about returning to Lutsk and being with her romantically at night. If even he fantasizes, how can she not do so also? Yitzhak intends to write her a postcard today telling her not to write him anymore in Baranivka so her postcards won’t fall into the hands of others.

The feelings of grief that well up after the decision to head east prompt Yitzhak’s insights about the nature of his mind and personality. He realizes that whichever way the decision would have gone he would have had second thoughts and doubts. Even if he had decided to go to Lutsk, his mind would have shown him all the downsides of such a journey and all the positive sides of a journey to other places. This ambivalence is part of who he is, part of what it means to be a feeling person. He knows too that this latest bout of intense feeling is still entangled in the grief over his mother’s death and that he is not done with experiencing the depth of that tragedy in his life.

While writing in his diary a postcard arrived from his sister, Riba, in Kiev. A man named Avraham Feldman offered that Yitzhak could come stay with his family in Pryluky which is further east of Kiev. The plan was now set.

Interpretive Summary – Tuesday, January 30, 1917, Pryluky

Yitzhak arrived in Pryluky last Thursday. Now five days later, he recounts some of the details of his travel though his focus in this diary entry is on his first negative impressions of the people in Pryluky.

Yitzhak left Baranivka on Monday January 22nd and arrived in Kiev on Tuesday morning. Surprisingly, Yitzhak doesn’t have much to say about that journey. Previously (Jan. 16th) he indicated the journey would be by train, his first experience with that mode of travel. Unfortunately, Yitzhak says nothing about the 220 km (136 m) trip except to note that the journey was “not bad,” even though the route was a bit congested with “vehicles” (merkābôt), a Hebrew word that probably refers to carriages, wagons and cars. A reader is left wondering whether Yitzhak and Heni’s sister-in-law who accompanied him, did indeed take the train to Kiev and if so, why Yitzhak didn’t say more about this first experience. Perhaps, the experience had already receded in importance following the commotion of travel and the difficult emotions and impressions from his first days in Pryluky.

In Kiev, Yitzhak spent two days with his sisters, Riba and Malcah, though he says nothing else about what it was like to be with his sisters again. He hadn’t seen Riba since 1914 when she and her family left Mlynov after a visit (Aug. 5, 1914). What was it like to be reunited again? What was her home in Kiev like? What was wartime Kiev like at the end of January 1917, only weeks before the Russian Revolution would begin?

Unfortunately, Yitzhak didn’t write in his diary while in Kiev. While there, however, he did meet with Mr. Feldman, the man Riba identified in her earlier letter to Yitzhak in Baranovka as the one offering to assist Yitzhak in heading further east to his home in Pryluky. After speaking to him, Yitzhak realized that it was not as simple for Feldman to get him to Pryluky as his sister had implied, though Yitzhak does not explain whether the challenge was organizing travel or avoidance of Russian military conscription. In the meantime, Yitzhak writes somewhat cryptically that he made arrangements with his sisters to organize “an exchange” between himself and his brother Moshe. Was the plan to switch identity papers with his brother to avoid conscription somehow? It seems the most plausible explanation.

Yitzhak left Kiev on Wednesday night and arrived in Pryluky, 145 km (90 m) further east, on Thursday morning. He went immediately to house of worship to say prayers and the vibe of the place depressed Yitzhak right away. In judgmental first impressions, Yitzhak decided that the local men were unkind, unfriendly, and uninterested in him. Surprisingly, even the presence of a large Zionist youth group in town does nothing to buoy his spirits or reduce his loneliness. Earlier, when Yitzhak was still living in Mlynov before the War, and also in Hubyn as a refugee, he complained in his diary that he had so few friends who shared his interest in Zionism and with whom he could speak Hebrew. Now, even though there is a large group of Zionist youth in Pryluky, Yitzhak assumes that he won’t find friends among them because of their “narrow focus on the national idea.” He writes, “all this by now has lost meaning in my eyes (truth be told) and does not surprise me or stir up my enthusiasm as in days past.” Undoubtedly, Yitzhak’s interpersonal insecurity and traumatic experiences are shaping his initial negative reaction to the news of the Zionist youth groups. These youth were serious Zionists. The youth group was organized initially by a Mordechai Feigelson who served during the war as a doctor in a medical hospital in Pryluky. Yitzhak hopes to meet this doctor on the Sabbath. Members of this Zionist group later joined an agricultural training farm near Odessa and subsequently helped establish the first kibbutz in the Judean Hills in Palestine. These were certainly Zionist youth with whom Yitzhak could share his dreams of making aliyah and living in the Land.

But Yitzhak also knows himself and in his first scan of the young Zionists he met, he fears he won’t be able to connect with these people. In a revealing description of the kind of friend he is seeking, Yitzhak describes someone like himself: a person

whose spirit aspires to the invisible heights, and sinks into the depths of life’s secrets in all their different dimensions; a friend whose soul is aroused and feels too much, who discerns the very fine and deep resonances in poetry, who hears the most inner turbulence of the poetic soul, [one who] investigates, [I am looking] for a friend who is always lost and seeking, lost among various paths and various trails and who seeks satisfaction for his thirst, who seeks and seeks incessantly, a friend with a large heart and a deep endless spirit. I want to befriend friends like these, friends with whom I can share the entirety of what fills me, to improve and strengthen the awareness of creativity’s wellspring.

February 1917

Interpretive Summary – Sunday, February 11, 1917, Pryluky

Yitzhak was terribly ill in bed for nearly two weeks since he last wrote in his diary. Just two days ago he finally got out of bed again. He had influenza. He blames the severity of the illness partly on being in a moist room which exacerbated his condition. His hosts (the Feldmans) called the doctor who prescribed various medicines but they didn’t alleviate his condition and his cough worsened. The doctor concluded he had pneumonia. The doctor then recommended a folk remedy called “bankes” (in Yiddish), or “cupping glasses,” in which cups are heated up and placed on the body to create vacuums and mobilize the energy and blood of the body. They called the Felsher, the Jewish medic, and he applied the treament all day last Thursday. The remedy helped and Yitzhak got out of bed for the first time on Friday.

Needless to say, Yitzhak feels isolated and lonely being ill in a foreign with no family or friends. He still hasn’t received any letters or postcards from Zahava. He also awaits news from his siblings in Kiev about their efforts to secure papers that will somehow protect him from conscription. When that materializes he hopes to leave this place and return to Kiev. In the meantime, Yitzhak has not secured any teaching opportunity and admits that he really doesn’t have any pedagogic talent and doesn’t like teaching either. He dislikes trying to enter into the mind of his students and having to rehearse banal ideas and concepts. But he has no choice. Spending all his time in books during his youth, he learned no other skill that makes him employable. He hopes that perhaps he will secure some sort of agreement for teaching, perhaps in a school someplace, instead of giving private lessons, which drain him and undermine his creativity. True to form, Yitzhak here looks back at his time in Baranovka as a positive time of much creative and intellectual energy. He forgot how miserable he was living in the home of his sister, Heni. But now in Pryluky it feels as if everything has come to a halt, and Yitzhak feels his hate for the place is not gratuitous.

Interpretive Summary – Monday, February 12, 1917, Pryluky

Interpretive Summary – Wednesday, February 21, 1917, Pryluky

Yitzhak sinks to a new low in his mood as he waits for the new identity papers from his brother Moshe. He feels completely isolated since he doesn’t go out and when he does he doesn’t talk to anyone due to his fear. He feels like a burden to his host, Malka Feldman, in whose house he is staying since he can’t get work teaching now and can’t pay for his room and board. Yitzhak writes a detailed letter to his sister in Kiev, but he has little hope they can do anything to help. Everything depends on Moshe receiving the identity papers that will allow him to return to a normal life. In his bleak mood, in which Yitzhak wonders how long he can continue to tolerate this isolation, and in which he expresses loathing for everything around him and even for his own self, Yitzhak wonders how long he can tolerate the current situation.

Interpretive Summary – Friday, February 23, 1917, Pryluky

A postcard that arrived from Yitzhak’s sisters that set Yitzhak into an emotional tailspin. Their father wrote to them complaining he hadn’t gotten any letters from family members. Yitzhak feels awful for not writing and trying to ease his depressed father’s sprit. Yitzhak wanted to write but he didn’t know their address in Zviahel. One suspects that this may be just an excuse. He could have sent a letter to his sister for his father. And besides what could Yitzhak have written given his situation that could possibly have lifted his father’s spirit?

After the letter arrived, Yitzhak did have a momentary flash of past moments that were heartwarming. What triggered these good memories was a young man in the house of worship whose appearance reminded him of Shmuel Burshtak, his close friend back in Hubyn. Yitzhak is puzzled by how powerful is the urge is to approach this young man knowing that he is a stranger. He recognizes that the past looks much better than when it was the present time. Still the sight of his young man stirs up intense positive feelings about the time he spent with Shmuel in Hubyn, one of the few people who could bring Yitzhak out of his shell. Here now Yitzhak gives more detail about a time in Hubyn when he behaved uproariously with Shmuel (March 25, 1916). Back then he simply said that he was so wild with Shmuel, dancing wrestling and drowning his sorrows. Now he gives more detail of that experience including the moment he grabbed Shmuel’s hat and pretended it was a drum, and how the two boys began to loudly sing a Hasidic melody and to put their hands on each other’s shoulders and danced a Hasidic dance, details only hinted at back then in his diary on March 25, 1916, nearly a year earlier. Looking back, that experience appears now to have been a “revelatory” moment when Yitzhak, the loner, could open up and feel safe with a true friend. Yitzhak wonders whether Shmuel who is Austrian territory now still remembers him.

Another young man that Yitzhak spots in the house of worship reminds him of Avraham Burshtak, Shmuel’s older brother. Yitzhak takes note of how his memory plays on his emotions and how a resemblance in appearance triggers a desire to approach someone who doesn’t even know. In Hubyn, Yitzhak never said he regarded Avraham as a friend and mentioned him only infrequently, now we learn that looking back Yitzhak and Avraham “felt close to one another and spent time together as close friends.”

In the meantime, Yitzhak has not yet received a letter from his sweetheart Zahava. This hiatus in letters would cause him great suffering, he concludes, if he had space to be alone. But he is stuck in the Feldman home with their young children whose childless laughter and joking numb his feelings and prevent him from delving deep into his feelings of sadness. “Is it possible this is beneficial for me?” he asks. Indeed it probably is, though Yitzhak doesn’t answer the question.

Interpretive Summary – Monday, February 26, 1917, Pryluky

In a mostly self-reflective psychological entry, Yitzhak ponders the nature of his mind and his emotions which ultimately shape his drive to be creative. At the heart of this reflection is his insight that whenever he forms one conviction, another opposite impulse is immediately present. This is one of the reasons he feels he can’t use his diary to capture his thinking. As soon as one idea arises the opposing idea rears its head.

This is not a new insight about himself. He has written earlier about how he always finds the place he is in currently to be less than satisfactory and how he imagines that some other place would be better. But he knows if he were there in the other place, he would see its faults and idealize the place he is not in. Yitzhak has also examined this similar impulse to think of the past as better than the present, realizing that every past that he now idealizes was some current present in which he was dissatisfied.

In this entry, he asks himself whether he is a fickle or volatile man (hăpakpak)? For reasons that are not entirely clear, he concludes he is not fickle or volatile, even though his self-description would seem to make the adjectives fit. In the end, he does admit that this is nature of his character and is unchangeable, and perhaps that is why he refuses the label of fickle.

Perhaps Yitzhak’s reflection on his ambivalent nature was prompted by notes of optimism that he reports. He was told yesterday that it was safe to go out after prayers and so he approached a member of the Zionist Youth named Aryeh Levyatin to get some advice about whether he could secure tutoring or teaching lessons given his current situation. Levyatin told him that he probably could and offered Yitzhak space in his cheder. As if an omen, a young woman came to the Feldman house inquiring whether Yitzhak could offer tutoring lessons. Yitzhak turned her down still waiting for the arrival of his new “clothing” [identity papers] but he also realizes now that once those arrive he could readily support himself financially with teaching, though he would need to find his own private room away from the chaos in the Feldman house.

The optimistic turn in Yitzhak’s experience prompts the creative juices to start again. He feels the impulse to start writing again, though he knows as soon as he begins he will be totally absorbed. The thought of writing again prompts his ambivalence almost immediately about the existential value of art. What purpose does his creative efforts hold?

When you devote yourself to the creativity that thousands of thinkers, researchers, and poets devoted themselves to in every generation, are you adding straw to dust? Will you solve the riddles of the world? Do they have solutions? Lord of the Universe! What is wanted from me, this clown?

In a provocative analogy and supported by a linguistic pun, Yitzhak questions the value of all artistic and creative efforts. Are not all representations (marʾôt) of life like a flower? We enjoy the beauty of flowers, but when seek to grasp the essence of how they work, we tear off their leaves and are left with nothing. So too the artistic creative effort. “I tear the petals from each and every flower – and the big zero goes and reveals itself to me with all its terrors (môrāʾôt).” It is as if to say that the very creative artistic endeavor is already intrusive and destructive to the experience it is trying to represent.

Interpretive Summary – Wednesday, February 28, 1917, Pryluky

A positive turn of events continues to lighten Yitzhak’s mood. A sweet postcard arrived from Zahava indicating that she is planning to write a detailed letter in the next 24 hours. Yitzhak has already sent her three postcards and therefore decides to wait for her letter before responding.

Apparently the two tutoring opportunities have materialized. The first is to tutor a young woman named Manya Pomerantz. Manya’s identity is not certain, but online resources do identify the family of Kalman Pomerantz living in Pryluky during this time. The family came to Pryluky during the upheaval of WWI. Kalman had a daughter named Malka Pomerantz who was involved in the Zionist Youth group in Pryluky during this time and subsequently made aliyah and was involved in the founding of Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim. It seems possible that “Manya Pomerantz” was a sister of Malka’s.

Yitzhak’s other tutoring opportunity is with two young men whose names are not mentioned. Yitzhak does not yet know the salary he will receive, though any income at this time would have been welcome. In any case, he plans to discuss the matter of salary with Aryeh Levyitan, the Zionist young man he consulted two days earlier on the feasibility of securing tutoring before the arrival of his new identity papers. This time Yitzhak uses the honorific “Mr.” Aryeh Levyitan when talking about him, suggesting Yitzhak’s appreciation of his council and that he may be older than Yitzhak.

March 1917

Interpretive Summary – Sunday, March 4, 1917, Pryluky

Yitzhak’s mood brightens a bit upon receiving two letters, one indicating that his new identity papers will arrive soon and a love letter from Zahava. He also began tutoring finally a young woman in town and he has other teaching opportunities in the works. The optimistic news and letter from his sweetheart prompts Yitzak’s reflection on the nature of longing and love and stimulate his creative juices to write poetry again.

The first letter he mentions is from his sister Malcah who indicates that a young man they knew in Mlynov arrived in Kiev with identity papers for another unspecified person and that Yitzhak would receive his soon. He also received news that his sister, Riba, gave birth to a son in Kiev. A postcard also arrived from Yitzhak’s brother, Moshe, indicating he was completely out of the loop regarding the identity papers and was still waiting for them. His anguish and despair came through in his words, and put a damper on Yitzhak’s own optimistic mood. He acknowledges that he and his brother have different personalities and indicates that he wants to write about that more at another time.

In addition to the updates from family, Yitzhak received a genuinely loving letter from his sweetheart Zahva. Yitzhak quotes from her letter and interprets her words, noting how doubt only creeps in when she is talking about his feelings towards her. Zahava’s letter also brings some news about people Yitzhak stayed with in Hubyn. Good news. Shlomo Burshtak’s wife Etke gave birth to a son. Sad news. Yehezkel Burshtak’s wife, Devorah, became severely ill and is heading to Kiev for surgery. Yitzhak must have kindly remember her as the one who maternally gave him space in her sideboard for his diaries and poems. Sadly, her husband Yehezkel is still on the Austrian side of the border and knows nothing about what is going on with her. Another man, Nahman Hahironbai burned his face and is recovering in the hospital. Yitzhak never mentioned him in his diary previously.

Yitzhak responded to all the letters and also wrote to his two sisters still in Baranovka. He also sent a Yiddish letter to Kiev with Mr. Avraham Feldman, the man in whose home Yitzhak is staying. Feldman is evidently going back and forth periodically from Kiev to Pryluky.

All the positive news and the letter from Zahava prompts Yitzhak to reflect on the nature of love and longing. He admits the topic is sometimes wearying and he wants to “strike a red line” through it. This time however, he expands on the topic and explains that he identifies two types of longing: a lustful longing of a man for a woman and a platonic longing for a woman who will comfort and care for one like a sister. Most of the time recently Yitzhak has had the second type of longing, for that platonic comforting love. But he admits that since last evening he has had the other lustful type of longing.

Insightfully, Yitzhak writes how he sublimated these feelings into the creative act of writing a poem. Whether he completely understands or grasps at this point how his feelings of optimism are tied to both the sexual energy and literary creativity he feels is not entirely clear.

Interpretive Summary – Wednesday night (Purim night), March 7, 1917, Pryluky

The arrival of the holiday of Purim triggers Yitzhak’s nostalgia for the celebration a year earlier when he was still in Hubyn. Though his journal entries from that period indicate he was extremely distraught, he fondly recalls being in the family home of his sweetheart, Zahava, on Purim night a year earlier, reading books, enjoying conversation and passing time. He recalls too how the day of Purim day a year ago was difficult emotionally. But who could have imagined then, Yitzhak now wonders, that matters would get significantly worse and that though his hoped-for reunification with his family would be realized, his mother would pass away.

The thought of all that transpired in a year prompts Yitzhak to write metaphorically and existentially about the brutality of time’s passage and about the ultimate lack of control in human life. Humans are just weak tiny creatures bandied about on the ocean. While there are moments they feel they are in control of their direction and destiny, such times are tiny respites in an otherwise angry, roiling ocean that will bring its fury down on them. “My God! My God! What have you done to us?” Yitzhak asks.

Despite such fatalistic thoughts, there are signs that Yitzhak’s overall outlook continues to improve. He is thinking about his creative efforts again and even starting to dream again. He mentions wanting to write about the sequence of life’s episodes beginning with childhood. This is a subject he has thought about before in the period when he was still in Hubyn. He acknowledges the impossibility of remembering all such details, but the idea of recording the major episodes of life intrigues him. Be that as it may, Yithzak is not certain he will undertake that effort since he has accumulated much material that needs organization and improvement.

With his attention back to his literary efforts, Yitzhak is having doubts again about his talents. While he sometimes believes in his natural talent, he knows that to perfect his skill he must continue to refine and develop his art. Such improvement, however, requires a suitable and supportive environment and Yitzhak doesn’t feel that Pryluky is such a place. Moscow, however, would be such a place, Yitzhak explains. The big city offers more variety and stimulation. Plus, Yitzhak has heard that the few existing writers of Hebrew in Russia have congregated there now and it has become a kind of small center for Hebrew literature. Appearing suddenly out of nowhere, Yitzhak’s ambitious thought of going to Moscow, 848 km north of Pryluky, indicates how Yitzhak’s emotional equilibrium has begun to return and how he has started to think of more than just his survival. Still, Yitzhak knows that the idea of going to Moscow is unrealistic at least now. He still doesn’t have his new identity papers and he doesn’t have enough money to live there. These obstacles don’t completely deter him. He knows that acquaintance of his from Mervits, the town close to Mlynov, is in Moscow. He will write to him and find out more what it would take for him to go there too.

Interpretive Summary – Tuesday night, March 13, 1917, Pryluky

A postcard arrives from Zahava and Yaakov Krantz. Yaakov’s postcard that triggers Yitzhak’s longstanding fears. Yaakov was a young refugee whom Yitzhak apparently knew and liked from his time in Lutsk. Yaakov writes that he is annoyed that Yitzhak hasn’t answered earlier postcards. But what apparently sets off Yitzhak’s fear is his other news: the homeowner Yitzhak stayed with in Lutsk when he was there is returning to the city and if Yitzhak would like, he can come stay there too. It is probably that possibility that prompts Yitzhak’s fears since Lutsk is much closer to the Eastern Front than Pryluky and a return to Lutsk may represent danger, especially in the spring when the fighting is likely to start up again.

The thought of fighting starting up again, evokes another fear, of being separated from his sweetheart, Zahava. Yitzhak doesn’t want to launch into his typical analysis of whether this love is real or not. At this point, he recognizes that it sustains him at a time of darkness. At a time when he feels so alone, with no friends, and no family at hand, he is comforted by the thought of someone who loves him and cares for him. What if, he wonders, the war makes it impossible for them to even exchange letters? How monumental would that loss be?

Playing on Zahava’s name, which shares a Hebrew stem with the word for “gold’ and “shines,” Yitzhak imagines how a world without a connection to his beloved would be a world without light. He mourns this possibility even though, true to his nature, he admits that if their relationship continued, it would lose its brilliance in the future, and he would castigate himself for having chased “a flash in error.” Yitzhak knows this ambivalence that dogs his every decision and choice is deep inside himself and has no remedy at least for now. Yitzhak had a dream about Zahava last night. He could see himself sitting with her and he felt the feelings of comfort pervade his body. Sadly, Yitzhak concludes that it is only in a dream that you can feel this way, when the analytical and ambivalent mind is turned off, and one does not doubt everything all the time.

Yitzhak wrote back to Zahava and to Yaakov Krantz. What he wrote them he does not say. He has not heard in the meantime from Baranovka where his sister Heni lives. As a result, he has no news about his father and Aunt or his sister Chantza. On this note, Yitzhak ends this entry mournfully, reflecting on how his family has been torn apart during the War. They are spread out. His mother is no longer alive. Even if they could return to Mlynov, and their prior fortunes could be restored, nothing would be the same since his mother would not be there. Life has changed unalterably. There is no return to that past that Yitzhak so idealizes.

Tuesday night, March 20 [or Wednesday night, March 21], 1917, Pryluky

Yitzhak last wrote in his diary on either the night of March 12 or March 13, 1917 (following dates on the Gregorian calendar), depending on whether he was using traditional Jewish or secular calendrical concepts. Now, eight days later, on either March 20th or 21st, Yitzhak writes a brief entry indicating his knowledge of the revolution that toppled the Tsarist regime. He says that he didn’t write during these eight days due to his laziness, but one can imagine that as news of the events unfolding in the capital of Petrograd began to reach him in Pryluky, the meaning of the events was confusing. Indeed, even the Tsar himself, who was vacationing outside the capital, did not initially grasp the full import of the events that had begun.

Interpretive Summary – Friday, March 23, 1917, Pryluky

Yitzhak is perplexed why his spirit is heavy, given the signs of spring in the air, the public rallies celebrating the Russian revolution and the new horizons opening before the Jewish people and its national revival movement. He has just returned from one such large public celebration in Pryluky where he found it difficult to be among the joyous and boisterous crowd. He wonders why he feels alienated in such settings. Is it simply his distinctive temperament–his tendency to feel different from others–or do his feelings stem from from the fear that, while other peoples are experiencing national revival, the revival of the Jewish people remains uncertain?

Yitzhak plans to attend the large Zionist meeting taking place the next day, but even there he expects to feel alienated and sad. Then in a surprising and revealing statement, Yitzhak writes that he expects to see the phoniness of all the Zionists and the local big shots. In earlier entries, Yitzhak had dismissed the Zionist youth of Pryluky in earlier entries as unsuitable companions, but he had not previously accused them so directly of falseness and insincerity. Yitzhak is therefore disappointed to that the one Zionist in town that he respects, Dr. Feigelson, will leave Pryluky the following week to serve as a doctor at the front. Yitzhak has also received nothing from Zahava, which probably contributed to his bleak mood, though he does not explicitly make that connection.

Interpretive Summary – Monday, March 26, 1917, Pryluky

Yitzhak describes the Zionist assembly that took place on Saturday night, in which he participated. The gathering made a positive impression on him, especially as the first official Zionist gathering attended by many people who were still unfamiliar with the national idea. He also came away with a substantially revised impressed of Dr Feigelson. In this setting, Feigelson’s total dedication to Zionism was evident and Yitzhak credits him with the considerable progress of the local Zionist youth group and praises his speeches for their lofty ideas and the warmth and feelings with which they were delivered.

Despite the new appreciation of Feigelson, Yitzhak considers some of his ideas extreme. He objects, in particular, to Feigelson’s division of Zionists into “positive” and “negative” camps and to his claim that only those who have put down roots in the Land of Israel truly deserve the name Zionist.

Yitzhak himself also spoke at the gathering. He tried to explain his disagreement with Feigelson and responded to the many criticisms of Zionism voiced during the event that, in his view, should have served primarily as an introduction to the national idea. More complicated internal criticisms, he believes, belonged among informed activists rather than before newcomers.

Yitzhak felt that his own speech did not express his ideas as clearly as he could formulate them in writing. He doubted his own talent as a speaker, and the need for Feigelson to translate each of his Hebrew sentences into Russian repeatedly interrupted the speech and prevented it from smooth and coherent delivery.

The entry also reveals Yitzhak’s growing confidence in his own Zionist understanding. Although he came from Mlynov, where organized Zionist activity was nearly nonexistent during his youth, he obviously feels qualified not only to evaluate the Pryluky gathering but also to judge how Zionism should be presented and cultivated among newcomers.

Interpretive Summary – Tuesday, March 27, 1915, Pryluky

Yitzhak continues to expand on yesterday’s diary entry providing additional details about the large Zionist gathering that took place on Saturday “after the Sabbath” and the meeting that followed on Sunday. The entry brings together three intersecting concerns—his Zionist commitment, romantic volatility and conscription anxiety.

Yitzhak indicates the large Zionist gathering, described in the previous entry as taking place after the Sabbath, actually began at three or four in the afternoon before the Sabbath ended– and continued until midnight. The gathering evidently overcame some of Yitzhak’s internal resistance to the local Zionist efforts from which he previously held himself aloof. Now he wants to join the local work of revival which he sees as providing an emotional anchor that can give him hope and prevent him from falling into despair. He announces his willingness now to tackle the earlier inhibitions that kept him at a distance. While the local Zionist leaders act arrogantly in Yitzhak’s view and look down their noses at him, he now feels he can stand up for himself and demonstrate that he is not a “good-for-nothing” teacher.

Interpretive Summary – Friday, March 30, 1917, Pryluky

Yitzhak provides an update on his literary efforts to get published, the ongoing the turmoil in his love life, and a meeting of the local teachers in town.

Yitzhak reports that he sent one of his poems, “Even Before I Grew Weary,” to the editorial offices of the relatively new Hebrew weekly, Ha-Am (The People). The weekly was only Hebrew periodical then being published in the Russian interior, where wartime censorship severely restricted the Hebrew press. It began publication in Moscow in November 1916, just months before the Revolution, and Yitzhak had mentioned in his entry on January 30, 1917, that the Pryluky library was receiving the publication. He therefore presumably knew that the weekly published prominent Zionist figures such as Max Nordau, as well as major literary writers such as Hayyim Nahman Bialik. It is easy to understand why an aspiring young poet and Zionist would wish to appear in this important forum of Hebrew and Zionist thought.

Yitzhak nevertheless expresses deep ambivalence about submitting his poem for publication. He feels that he has violated his own internal commitment to write solely for himself – creativity for its own sake – and not adulterate the purity of his efforts by worrying about the expectations of others. Although he denies being motivated merely by publicity, he suspects he wants to demonstrate his rich inner life to the local Zionist workers who dismiss him as an idler. This may also explain why the publication of Ha-Am matters so much to him: recognition in a prominent Zionist Hebrew periodical would affirm both his literary ability and his place within the Zionist intellectual community whose respect he seeks. He also recognizes at least one positive motivation: his desire to connect with a community of writers, though in general he feels that something sacred in his inner world has been sullied by sending his poem for publication. He also doubts that the editors will accept the poem, fearing that it contains flaws he has not yet perceived.

Meanwhile, Yitzhak remains distressed about his relationship with Zahava and the feelings stirred in him by the three young gymnasium women. He has answered Zahava’s letter with only a postcard, though he intends to write her a substantial letter after the Sabbath. Images of Zahava hover in his mind now with a pleading gaze that seems to protest his betrayal. The previous night Yitzhak felt despondent enough to sketch the substances a poem about “the complete end of love,” though by the time of this entry, he does feel so bleak. He hopes that Zahava will send him a photo of herself that can help keep the images of the other young women at bay.

Finally, Yitzhak describes a meeting of the local teachers to discuss their challenges and the founding of a teacher’s association. Yitzhak hesitates to get more deeply involved knowing that the Zionist already dismiss him as “an idler” due to his role as a teacher.

April 1917

Interpretive Summary – Sunday, April 1, 1917, Pryluky

The arrival of a postcard on Friday from Yitzhak’s sister Malcah sends him into an emotional tailspin. She tells him he needs to travel to Kiev on Wednesday so they can travel together “home,” to Novohrad-Volynsky, where their father is currently living, for the Festival of Passover. Yitzhak acknowledges that joining the family there for Passover is the correct course of action. But the thought of the Passover celebration sparks Yitzhak’s warm memories of the holiday back in Mlynov and triggers grief about all the suffering of his family during the War. They are far from their hometown, Mlynov, his mother is no longer living, each of them have personal troubles.

Yitzhak expressed similar feelings while a refugee in Hubyn, when the prospect of spending Passover away from his family intensified his homesickness (see entries for Oct. 26 and Nov. 30, 1915). There is a painful irony now: it is the prospect of joining his family for Passover that provokes his grief. Reunion in Novohrad-Volynsky will not restore the Passovers he remembers in Mlynov; instead, gathering together without his mother and still displaced from their hometown will make the family’s losses impossible to escape. To further complicate matters, Yitzhak feels he can’t leave Pryluky since he still has not received the papers needed to avoid conscription that his brother Moshe was going to send him.

What is striking here is that Malcah’s postcard seems suddenly to force the approaching holiday into Yitzhak’s consciousness. Passover would begin in less than a week (Friday evening, April 6th), and the arrival of Nisan and the synagogue calendar would already have made its approach unmistakable. Yet amid the extraordinary events of the preceding weeks—the Revolution, the proclamation of civic equality for Jews, Zionist meetings, and his continuing anxiety over papers and conscription—Yitzhak apparently had not yet confronted what celebrating Passover after his mother’s death, away from Mlynov, would mean emotionally.

Yitzhak thus admits to his diary that, though he must join his family for the celebration, he honestly doesn’t want to go. But he must go, not only out of a filial duty, but for a second reason that has to do with his standing in Pryluky. Celebrating Passover in Pryluky, Yitzhak fears, will only further reinforce the negative impression that the other Zionist activists already have of him. In recent entries, he noted how Zionist leaders regarded him as an “idler” due to his occupation as teacher. He repeats that view again but now adds a new worry.

Yitzhak suspects that should he celebrate Passover in Pryluky, which for him is foreign place, the activists will look down on him as though he were by nature a wanderer and idler, rather than a refugee displaced from the home and family to which he remains deeply attached. Staying in Pryluky would thus seem to confirm a judgment of him that he believes is fundamentally false. Thinking this way is not self-centered egoism, Yitzhak insists to his diary, but an effort to set the record straight about who he really is and where he comes from. His concern for his standing, he argues, reflects both self-worth and a powerful family feeling “Plainly not out of self-love, still it is hard for me when I know I am so and so, son of so and so, who until now has lived a normal life, in the social sense, [namely] in the home of his birth and in his town – who finds himself here on so low a rung, whereas he could occupy a higher rung in society than others.” Where Yitzhak will ultimately decide to celebrate Passover is yet to be determined.

Interpretive Summary – Sunday, April 8, 1917, Novohrad Volinskyi (during Passover)

Yitzhak recounts his difficult journey from Pryluky to Novohrad Volinskyi [currently Zviahel], his Passover with his family, and a surprising letter from Moshe about enlisting in the military that throws his own plans into disarray.

Yitzhak left Pryluky on Tuesday, but various obstacles including crowds on the train, delayed his arrival in Kiev, by which time his sister Malcah had already left for Novohrad Volinsky. Yitzhak finally arrived there too on Friday, the eve of Passover, exhausted and with a cold. Yitzhak doesn’t say anything about the reunion with his family members, which is very surprising especially since his previous entry was so emotionally preoccupied with the prospect of seeing his family. Nor does Yitzhak mention the Passover seders, though he notes that he was he was so exhausted and unwell that he did not go to synagogue to pray.

Since Yitzhak planned to return to Pryluky immediately after Passover ended, he left everything behind in Pryluky including his box of papers and writings. He also left instructions for his student Manya Pomeranz to organize a group of students for his return, and he provided the new teacher’s association with personal information its committee needed to arrange work for him. However, a letter from Moshe throws his plans into turmoil.

The letter arrived the day before Yitzhak. Moshe explained that he felt called to join the many others who were enlisting in the military now that Jews were granted freedom and equal rights like other Russian citizens in the wake of the Revolution. Furthermore, the government offered to pardon draft dodgers who reported before April 1 OS [April 14 on the Gregorian calendar]. Moshe is writing, the letter says, to take counsel with his father.

The report of Moshe’s letter is revealing in several ways. Though Yitzhak mentioned his own efforts to evade conscription on several occasions, he never once mentioned that his brother was also among the draft dodgers. Moshe’s decision to enlist now reflects an emancipation-era understanding equal civic rights for Jews also entails the duties of citizenship including military service. Indeed, even in Russia at the start of the war, many Jews felt an obligation to fight on behalf of their country. With the February Revolution and the new proclamation of civic rights for Jews, this sense of civic duty now appears to have helped move Moshe to his decision.

Moshe’s changed understanding of his civic obligation becomes the catalyst for Yitzhak’s own inner “revolution” and convinces him that he also has no other option but to enlist. However, Yitzhak appears to be moved, less by the duties of the citizen, than by the realization that everyone “in the same boat” is going to report and that the risk of not doing so is great. In addition, he notes that those who don’t report will be labeled deserters and appear to be reactionaries who still favor the toppled Tsarist regime. Perhaps because Yitzhak is a Zionist and his loyalty is focused on Jewish nationalism, he downplays the duty to the new Russian government. In any case, Yitzhak writes to Moshe and asks him to come to Novohrad to so they can consult together.

In the meantime, Yitzhak feels bored in Novohrad. There is nothing to do, he complains, and no one to spend time with and no library to visit. Ironically, he now misses the young Zionist activists from Pryluky. At first, Yitzhak wrote that he “almost longs for Pryluky,” but then he scratched out the word “almost,” removing all hesitation. Of course, when Yitzhak was in Pryluky, he felt ambivalent about these young people. Yet, as Yitzhak acknowledges in other journal entries, he habitually thinks “the grass is always greener” somewhere else.

Even though Yitzhak experiences the grief that he anticipated—celebrating Passover in a foreign place, with the family still displaced from its hometown and his mother dead—he is comforted by sitting once again “at his father’s table.” The phrase is emotionally laden. When Yitzhak first described himself as “exiled from his father’s table” after his displacement from Mlynov, he was quoting from a Talmudic story (B. Berachot 3a) that describes the pain God felt exiling the children Israel, “who were exiled from their Father’s table” (see entry for Oct 13, 1915, and note 66). Though still in a foreign place, Yitzhak now sits once again at his father’s table. With theological overtones that evoke the divine presence (Shekhinah) among Israel, he describes how his father and his aunt succeed in restoring their presence of tranquility and idyll—their “Shekhinah”—to the traditional festival celebration. <

Interpretive Summary – Friday, April 20, 1917, Novohrad Volinskyi

Yitzhak hasn’t written in his diary for twelve days, and in the interim, he has been preoccupied: registering with the military, going to Zhytomyr to consult a doctor about his nearsightedness, spending time with friends who arrived in town and writing letters to Pryluky and his sweetheart Zahava.

As soon as Passover ended, men began pouring into Novohrad Volinskyi one of the appointed military reporting sites. Among them was his friend Moshe Ganis from his time in Baranivka and a new acquaintance Efraim Leibenson. That evening Yitzhak left for Zhytomyr to consult a doctor about his nearsightedness and arrived there Monday morning. He was accompanied by Moshe Grinspun, a friend with Zionist aspirations that Yitzhak mentioned when he was still back in Mlynov (July 22, 1914). The purpose of the medical exam is not clear. It seems likely the consult was related to his decision to report to the military but whether he hoped his poor eyesight might provide grounds for exemption is not explicit. Nor is it clear why he didn’t visit a doctor in Novohrad Volinskyi and instead traveled about 50 miles to Zhytomyr.

The Christian holidays complicated Yitzhak’s efforts. Sunday, the day he traveled, was Easter in the Eastern Orthodox Church (April 15 NS/April 2 OS). On Monday, Yitzhak had trouble finding an available doctor. He did visit one female doctor who began to examine him but then told him she would need about five hours to complete the exam. Since Monday was a religious celebration known as “Bright Monday,” she didn’t want to finish the exam that day and offered to see him the next day. But Yitzhak needed to get back to Novohrad Volinskyi to report for military duty. Although a new law was announced that indicated draft dodgers had until May 15th OS (May 28th NS) Yitzhak was not certain he could delay reporting since he has already He had registered with the military by then.

In the meantime, Yitzhak wrote to his friend David Kotzki back in Pryluky, asking him to watch over his writings and papers until he figures out what to do about them being left there. In addition, he wrote a detailed letter to his sweetheart Zahava, apprising her about the details of his circumstances. His letter was loving reflecting the strengthening feelings of love he was experiencing. The ambivalence he felt back in Pryluky has, at least for the moment, subsided. Perhaps his departure from Pryluky — and the young women who recently complicated his feelings— coupled with his new uncertainty about his future, intensified his feelings for Zahava.

The constant tumult has frozen Yitzha’s inner spiritual world. In language perhaps reminiscent of the prophet Elijah who hears God in a “still small whisper (dəmāmâ),” Yitzhak lacks the silence (dəmāmâ) in which to hear the “murmuring” and “knocking” of his own creative power.

Interpretive Summary – Wednesday, April 25, 1917 NS /(April 12 OS), Novohrad Volinskyi

Yitzhak writes about his activity over the last five days as his military status remains in limbo. He still has not been examined for eligibility. Local military authorities announced a new law that men who are reporting for military service from other districts must show official documents that Yitzhak does not have. Yitzhak says only that he lacks the documents establishing his identity and personal particulars. Whether he can avoid this local requirement by going to Zhytomyr is not yet clear. Meanwhile, Yitzhak has been wearing glasses now for two days for his nearsightedness, though he is not certain they will help him. As noted in the discussion of his previous entry, it seems Yitzhak hopes the nearsightedness might exempt him from duty, though he admits his hope is waning now and, as if reconciling himself to the inevitable, he says that being inducted would not be a disaster.

Through all the recent tumult and uncertainty, Yitzhak’s spirits have been lifted by the presence of his friend, Moshe Grinspun, mentioned for the first time in his last entry. Since then, the two friends spent hours in conversation until last evening when Moshe left for Zhytomyr. Yitzhak is counting on him returning with information clarifying whether the Zhytomyr authorities also require the same official documents.

Moshe Grinspun is not the only person from Yitzhak’s past who recently appeared in Novohrad Volinskyi. While strolling in the street with Moshe Grinspun, Yitzhak encountered “Aharon from Rervitz.” Yitzhak hadn’t seen this man since he and his brother Moshe were refugees in Lutsk almost two years earlier. Back then, Aharon of Rervitz agreed to transport some of their belongings on his wagon as they set off on foot to Hubyn and he headed home to nearby Rervitz (Oct. 8, 1915). Along the way, they also took a break in Aharon’s home (Oct. 13, 1915). No wonder that Yitzhak immediately approached him and inquired about the wellbeing of people he knew. Before Aharon left town, Yitzhak gave him two letters to take, one for his sons and the other for his sweetheart, Zahava.

Winding down his entry, Yitzhak is waiting eagerly for his brother, Moshe, to arrive in town so that they can discuss everything going on. He confesses too to his diary that he has more he wants to say about the freezing of his creative impulse and his sorrow “about the voice of prophecy and poetry that has now fallen silent,” but at the moment he doesn’t feel up to the task. He promises, nonetheless, to say more about this topic in his next entry and perhaps shed light on this interesting comparison of his poetic muse to “the voice of prophecy.”

May 1917

Interpretive Summary – Wednesday, May 2, 1917, Novohrad Volinskyi

After a busy week of work, Yitzhak catches up on his diary writing in a lengthy entry filling more than seven of his original handwritten pages. Despite some worrisome news about his friend Kotzki, which arrived in a postcard from his sister, Yitzhak is more positive than usual, likely due to a registered letter he received from Zahava as well as news that Hebrew newspapers will start publishing again. Strikingly, amid all this reflection, Yitzhak has nothing new to report about his still-pending military obligation.

Earlier this week, Yitzhak was busy making cigarettes for a soldier who dropped by his family’s apartment during his absence last Friday. The soldier left tobacco and papirosa, or cigarette tubes, for the effort of making traditional Russian cigarettes, which Yitzhak’s family accepted with the expectation that Yitzhak carry out the work. Who the soldier was, and why he approached the Lamdan family, Yitzhak does not say, but the circumstances suggest that this may have been paid work that brought some welcome income to the family.

Over the past week, Yitzhak received two postcards and one registered letter. The first postcard was from Kotzki who responded empathically to Yitzhak’s earlier letter written during Passover. The second postcard, from Yitzhak’s sister, revealed that Kotzki was now seriously ill in Kiev, where doctors ordered him to travel to Crimea for health reasons, a journey his family could not afford. After digesting the sad news, Yitzhak realizes that he is unlikely to see the return of his belongings – including his precious writings – which he left behind in Pryluky.

On Sunday, a registered letter arrived from Zahava. The letter gave Yitzhak no small pleasure even though he was disappointed her photo was not included. The letter was bursting with feelings of love in every line and Yitzhak quotes excerpts to prove it. Yitzhak reassures himself, as he has done in past entries, that her devotion to him is not like the typical relationship between a young woman and a young man, but is like the devotion of a faithful sister, loving with all her soul and all her might…”

“Am I only imagining this?” Yitzhak asks himself. “Who can fathom the human spirit?” he asks echoing the poem “Between Two Lions,” by Haskalah poet Yehuda Leib Gordon, who was himself reworking a passage from the prophet Isaiah. In an evocative paragraph evoking images of light and darkness, some of which pun on the meaning of Zahava’s name (gold), Yitzhak assures himself that the radiance of love is pure and strong and that the “shadows” that creep into his own experience cannot dim the brilliance of his love. Yitzhak declares himself surrounded and carried away by memories and fantasy images, despite his well-trod encounter with the shadows and doubts of reality. In what appear to be sexual overtones, he also describes the “stirrings of youth” and “the boiling of blood” and expresses gratitude that no one else laid eyes on his diary, for they might get the mistaken impression that he actually has an active romantic/social life with women, whereas these feelings exist mostly “in thought and in secret.”

On Monday, Yitzhak replied to Zahava’s letter, consciously limiting his gushing words of love and flattery, since too much of such language is not appropriate, he says. Instead, Yitzhak focused on advice about how Zahava can improve herself, what she should study, read, and what language to use, all subjects close to Yitzhak’s own passions and interests. Of course, Yitzhak explains, he didn’t deprive his letter of all words of love, since Zahava has indicated love letters are the only joy in her life currently.

Leaving behind the subject of his relationship, Yitzhak turns to the news related to the Hebrew language and literature. He is gladdened to hear that the Hebrew newspaper, HaShiloach, will begin publishing again. Another existing newspaper (probably HaAm), includes literature among the topics it supposedly covers, Yitzhak regards its literary content as woefully inadequate. With no real publishing outlet for writers and poets, Yitzhak feels cheered by plans for new literary institutes. In the end, he admits that while his dispassionate analyses lead him to see the futility of everything, the limits of comprehension, and the endless abyss, he nevertheless feels himself drawn naturally and instinctively to literature “for its own sake.” Both in his love for Zahava and in his devotion to literature, Yitzhak feels swept along by forces and emotions that defy his analytical interrogation.

Interpretive Summary – Tuesday, May 8, 1917 NS [April 25, 1917 OS], Novograd Volinsk

In more than five handwritten diary pages, Yitzhak brings his third diary to a close, though he leaves a surprise punchline for the end with no reflection: his brother Moshe arrived in Novohrad Volinskyi before the Sabbath and then left again on Sunday for Rovno and Dubno, where he will present himself for his military examination. This dramatic and seemingly important news gets short shrift. Instead, Yitzhak writes about his Zionist activity, his feelings about socialism, and his attraction to a new young woman he met.

Yitzhak is writing on a Tuesday, April 25th, on the Julian calendar. His brother Moshe arrived in Novohrad Volinskyi, Friday morning last week. He left quickly on Sunday on his way back to Dubno, where he would be examined for military duty. Yitzhak’s unadorned report of this news is surprising for several reasons. A month ago, when Yitzhak first arrived in Novohrad Volinskyi for Passover, he read the letter from his brother Moshe explaining the reasons for his decision to enlist in the military. The news startled Yitzhak and he wrote to Moshe then asking him to come to Novohrad Volinskyi so they could “consult and decide what to do.” In Yitzhak’s diary entry on April 25th [April 12th OS] he indicates he is still eagerly awaiting his brother’s arrival.

Yet when his brother finally arrived, why does Yitzhak say nothing about the visit or their conversation? Why is his brother returning to the district near their hometown, while Yitzhak is reporting to the local military authorities? What did they talk about? Was it good to see Moshe? Nothing.

There are several possible explanations for Yitzhak’s silence though no certainty about his reasons. It is possible that Yitzhak deliberately avoided recording their conversations if they discussed how to handle their military obligations in ways that might cause trouble with authorities. How was Yitzhak planning to get around the local military ruling that a person needed to have papers from his home district or report there?

A contributing factor to Yitzhak’s silence may also have been the somewhat difficult relationship he had with his brother, Moshe. Perhaps the conversation between brothers did not go well and Yitzhak didn’t want to write about it, though he clearly wrote all the time about other feelings that made him uncomfortable. As early as his first diary in 1914, the tension between the brothers was evident. When they were refugees in Hubyn, Yitzhak couldn’t even talk to Moshe due to the pain of their situation. Then in Pryluky, Yitzhak was angry with Moshe for not speeding up the delivery of his needed identity papers. Perhaps Yitzhak was disappointed or hurt by the discussion with Moshe here in Novohrad Volinskyi. We simply do not know.

It is also plausible that Yitzhak was simply distracted by other interests that had clearly been preoccupying him over the past week and which he did write extensively about, one experience even becoming the basis of a new poem.

To begin with Yitzhak indicates he has been active in local Zionist work. An inner voice is calling him to “work for the revival of your people….Its hour has now come, too…” In a revealing and important aside, Yitzhak mentions his reaction to socialism for the first time in the diary. He tries to give socialism a hearing, and even “bends the knee” before the pure and true socialist idea. But the internationalist impulse he hears in socialism, that “there are no peoples, no nations,” he can’t stomach. “Judaism and the idea of revival have saturated my blood,” he says. And anyway, he knows himself. He dislikes “monotony” and prefers variation and a multiplicity of colors and many hues in the panorama of life. Analogously, the multiplicity of nations operating in its own sphere will produce a magnificent panorama of all humanity. His preference for Zionism is rooted here, in both his Jewish experience and in his aesthetic and experiential preference for variation and multiplicity. Yitzhak was either not exposed to efforts such as those of Poale Zion to reconcile socialism with Zionism or he found the effort unpersuasive.

The second experience, distracting and preoccupying Yitzhak, began sometime last week, before Moshe’s arrival. Yitzhak was out walking when he bumped into his sister Malcah and her friend, Gitel, strolling along the street. Malcah had to hurry home and asked Yitzhak accompany Gitel to her store. There Yitzhak was introduced to a young woman named Tzatzkis who was drinking tea and dressed in the clothing of a gymnasium student. Yitzhak barely gave her a glance, but she recognized Yitzhak from his time in Baranivka.

Gitel asked Yitzhak to accompany the young woman home to her apartment. What began as an insignificant chance encounter blossoms into what Yitzhak experiences as a burgeoning desire to spend time with this young woman. The intense feelings that are aroused cause Yitzhak to reflect on love and he arrives at the thoughtful insight that those young women in his life who made a lasting impression on him were those whom he paid no attention to at first. By contrast, those who attracted him initially left only a fleeting impression.

Yitzhak details how over the last week he somewhat obsessively sought opportunities and pretexts to bump into Tzatzkis again. In the end, he succeeds in encountering her again and she accepts his invitation to attend a Zionist meeting. Already in his diary, he writes of her as a “sweetheart,” and initially casts such attractions as “shadows” that threaten to dim the radiance of his love for Zahava. He still loves Zahava too, Yitzhak confesses, but he feels caught on the horns of a dilemma — before wondering whether they might instead be glimmers of light. On the one hand, he loves Zahava, but she is far away. On the other hand, his pent-up youthful feelings and passion demand “life,” and how can he deny them and let them wither away? Unfortunately, the poem “From Afar” which Yitzhak wrote about these feelings did not survive. Yitzhak intends to spend as much time as he can with Tzatzkis before she leaves to return to Baranivka.