ABSTRACT

In this chapter the author details the autobiographical memoir of his childhood in Vienna. For his life as a Jewish scholar, the author always loved his father and owed him an immense debt. Since he was an only son, and his father was less busy with private Hebrew lessons than his mother, he was able to teach the author much of what he had learned in his youth. His regular Chumash lessons started at age six. The author's father was responsible for his first publication, in a Hebrew newspaper in Warsaw when he was ten. His father showed the author how to write a Hebrew letter describing his daily activities, especially his Hebrew education. The author's relations with his father were complicated and painful. His father's impoverished childhood, the trauma of the war years in the Austrian army, and his failures in the postwar period caused him, like many ex-servicemen, to explode frequently with anger and frustration.