One might say we were whipped for every sin that a human being can commit. We were whipped for the sake of the next world as well as this world. We were whipped on the eve of every Sabbath, every feast and every fast. We were told that if we had not earned the whippings yet, we would earn them soon, please God. And Boaz gave us all the whippings we ought to have had from our friends and relatives. They gave the pleasant task in to his hands. Then we got whippings of which the teacher said: "You surely know yourself what they are for." And whippings just for nothing. "Let me see how a little boy lets himself be whipped." In a word, it was whippings, rods, leathers, fears and tears. These prevailed at that time, in our foolish little world, without a single solution to the problems they brought into being, without a single remedy for the evils, without a single ray of hope that we would ever free ourselves from the fiendish system under which we lived. And the good angel of whom my mother spoke? Where was he--that good angel? * * * I must confess there were times when I doubted the existence of this good angel. Too early a spark of doubt entered my heart. Too early I began to think that perhaps my mother had fooled me. Too early I became acquainted with the emotion of hatred. Too early, too early, I began to hate my teacher Boaz. And how could one help hating him? How, I ask you, could one help hating a teacher who does not allow you to lift your head? That you may not do--this you may not say. Don't stand here. Don't go there. Don't talk to So-and-so. How can one help hating a man who has not in him a germ of pity, who rejoices in another's pains, bathes in other's tears, and washes himself in other's blood? Can there be a more shameful word than flogging? And what can be more disgraceful than to strip anybody stark naked and put him in a corner? But even this was not enough for Boaz. He required you to undress yourself, to pull your own little shirt over your own head, and to stretch yourself face downwards. The rest Boaz managed. And not only did Boaz flog the boys himself, but his assistants helped him--his lieutenants, as he called them, naturally under his direction, lest they might not deliver the full number of strokes. "A little less learning and a little more flogging," was his rule. He explained the wisdom of his system in this way: "Too much learning dulls a boy, and a whipping too many does not hurt. Because, what a boy learns goes straight to his head, and his senses are quickened and his brains loaded. With the floggings it is the exact opposite. Before the effects of the flogging reach the brain the blood is purified, and by this means the brain is cleared. Well, do you understand?"