30. [My daughter has married an Italian who is a very good man].... My tragedy is much greater because I am a free thinker. Theoretically, I consider a “goi” [gentile] just as much a man as a Jew.... Indeed I ask myself these questions: “What would happen if my daughter married a Jewish fellow who was a good-for-nothing?... And what do I care if he is an Italian? But I can not seem to answer these delicate questions. The fact is that I would prefer a refined man; but I would sooner have a common Jew than an educated _goi_. Why this is so, I do not know, but that is how it is, of that there is no doubt. And this shows what a terrible chasm exists between theory and practice!...”[33] The tendency of communities and families to regulate so minutely the behavior of all their members was justified by the fact that in case of poverty, sickness, death, desertion, or ruin the community or family assumed the burden, “submitted to the yoke”, as they expressed it. In case No. 31 the former members of a community still support an abandoned child though they are in America and the child in Europe. 31. In the year 1912 in a little [Russian] village a father abandoned his family, a wife and three children. Of the children two were girls and the third was a boy six months old. The mother worried along with the children and finally in despair she changed her religion and married a Christian from a neighboring village. The children she simply abandoned. Of course the community of the village where this happened took care of the three abandoned children. They gave them out to families to be reared, and the village paid for them by the month. My mother was by no means a rich woman and felt the need of money, so she took the boy, for which the community paid. For some years everything went well, until the great World War broke out. The village in question was impoverished by the war and was plundered by various bands of pogromists. Great numbers of Jews were killed and the community was destroyed. My mother no longer received the monthly payment for the child; there was no one to make the payment. But my mother did not have the heart to throw the poor child into the street. They had become attached to each other, the child to my mother whom he called “mamma” and my mother to the child. So my mother kept the child without pay. That is, she and the child hungered and suffered together. Now, dear editor, I come to the point. The family of the writer of these lines was scattered. My father died at home. I and two sisters are now in America. My mother and the child are still in the old home. Of course we send our mother money for her support and this means that we support not only our mother but also the child of strangers. But it has never occurred to us here in America to reproach our mother because we are compelled to send money for a strange child.