Leah's Travel Experience
Samovar: A heated metal container traditionally used to heat and boil water.
By the middle of July 1884 Ben-Zion had saved enough money to send home to pay for steamship tickets as far as New York. Leah’s hopes brightened and her courage revived. She showed great diplomacy in getting out of Russia, for she had two sons, especially David, now past twenty years old, who had to report to the military authorities for service, and Herman was reaching his eighteenth year. She packed her few heirlooms, the feather beds, the large pillows, the samovar, some copper kettles, which the old women told her were unobtainable in America, and the most precious of all, the brass Sabbath chandeliers, among the other household articles.
They then journeyed to Plungyan [Plunge], Lithuania, thence to Gorzd [Gargzdai], also in Lithuania, where she left the boys in care of trusted smugglers who were to get them across the Russian frontier, an operation run hand in hand with great risk and difficulty. Running the gauntlet of the Russian frontier was an adventure for the Jews of that period. The Jewish community on the German side of the border operated the underground railroad system so silently that its romantic story is still to be written.
They sailed August 24 from Hamburg on the steamship Prague, switching in Glasgow to the Devonia and arriving in New York September 10, 1884.
Leah, with the girls and baggage, went straight to Memel, Germany [now Klaipeda, Lithuania], where they waited two days before the boys arrived. From Memel they all went on a tramp schooner to Steteen [Szczecin, Poland], then to Hamburg. Leah bought tickets to New York via Glasgow.
Their first lodging place before they were taken aboard was poor, unsanitary and unsafe. The sleeping quarters were unclean, what with twenty being housed in one room. Inhumane and uncivilized guards directed the bewildered immigrants to their quarters in the steerage where there was hardly any breathing space. The stench was unbearable. The food was dished out in dinner pails provided by the steamship company. Even drinking water was grudgingly given to the steerage passengers. No precaution was taken against inclement weather. One hundred to two hundred slept in one compartment, in bunks one above the other. There was no light, no privacy or comfort. On the fourth day after they were on the high seas the steamer felt the surging might of the implacable ocean.
A great wave rose suddenly out of the ocean and swept over the ship’s foredeck with a force such as only a wall of water possesses. In a flash it accomplished its destruction, twisting and breaking deck plates, stanchions and lifeboats. Its crest rose to a height of perhaps thirty feet. The sailors had neither fear nor sentiment. Their only aim was the duty of caring for the safe passage of the ship and passengers. They clamped down all hatches and covered them with oilskins to prevent drenching below the deck, thus shutting off the fresh air for those below, chiefly in the steerage. As the waves tossed the steamer, dishes rattled from the bunks to the floor, children cried in fear, men and women became seasick, and with trembling lips and failing hearts prayed to God, each in his mother tongue for the abatement of the storm.
Finally the mighty sea spent its force and passed into undulation astern with a triumphant roar expressive of enduring power. In the vast kingdom of water there are autocratic wind gods who rule the action of the waves, who paint the sky with their own beautiful colors.
In spite of her sad plight Leah was borne up by a steadfast hope. America, America!
The trip took twenty-one days owing to the high seas they encountered. There was considerable excitement on board during the time, for there were three deaths. The bodies were lowered into the sea according to maritime law. The morning that land was sighted there was even greater excitement, and the hearts of the immigrants were filled with emotion as the ship glided past the Statue of Liberty and into Castle Garden Immigration Office, the gateway to the refuge from Czardom. But the landing on the shores of the land of the free and the home of the brave was no pleasant experience for the immigrants. They were surrounded by the guarding mechanism of the law, which instructs, sifts, picks and excludes the weak and helpless regardless of earnest pleas. Thousands are greeted at this gateway by fathers or husbands.
Poor Leah and her children were detained, for there was no one to meet them. Leah heard the heavy iron gates shut as the last person left, and she and her children were held as captives of the law until they could hear from Ben-Zion. Leah showed she had more than the toughness of a monarch’s fiber in her determination to carry her plans to a successful end. She laid before the commissioner the letters she had from her husband and pleaded for permission to send her eldest son to find him, as the steamer was to remain a week before its return to Europe.
She hoped that Ben-Zion could be found and that he would provide tickets for the rest of the journey by telegraph in the meantime. The immigration officer wired for information to Ludington, Michigan, and reply came that he was not there at that time but was away peddling and they could not reach him. Therefore, they permitted David to go to find his father.
This makes no sense at all. How could David go from NYC to Michigan and back in a week?
I know, it seems pretty tight, even on the train.
Love this sentence about the law: "instructing, sifting, picking and excluding the weak..." sounds like Foucault!