No hovel so mean but what its casement sent out its consecrated ray, so that a wayfarer passing in the twilight saw the spirit of God brooding over the lowly roof.
Care and fear and shrewishness dropped like a mask from every face.
Eyes dimmed with weeping kindled with inmost joy.

Wherever a head bent over a sacred page, there rested the halo of God's presence.
Not on festivals alone, but also on the common days of the week, we lived by the Law that had been given us through our teacher Moses.

How to eat, how to bathe, how to work--everything had been written down for us, and we strove to fulfil the Law.

The study of the Torah was the most honored of all occupations, and they who engaged in it the most revered of all men.
My memory does not go back to a time when I was too young to know that God had made the world, and had appointed teachers to tell the people how to live in it.

First came Moses, and after him the great rabbis, and finally the Rav of Polotzk, who read all day in the sacred books, so that he could tell me and my parents and my friends what to do whenever we were in doubt.