Before my parents had been married half a year, my grandfather's house was divided against itself and my mother was torn between the two factions.

For while she sympathized with her parents, and felt personally cheated by my father's lack of piety, she thought it was her duty to take her husband's part, even against her parents, in their own house.

My mother was one of those women who always obey the highest law they know, even though it leads them to their doom.
How did it happen that my father, who from his early boyhood had been pointed out as a scholar in embryo, failed to live up to the expectations of his world?
It happened as it happened that his hair curled over his high forehead: he was made that way.

If people were disappointed, it was because they had based their expectations on a misconception of his character, for my father had never had any aspirations for extreme piety.

Piety was imputed to him by his mother, by his rebbe, by his neighbors, when they saw that he rendered the sacred word more intelligently than his fellow students.