Last week my youngest son became Bar Mitzvah. He read from Torah for the first time as an adult. Last week was a very difficult week for my family, but now that it’s over I have some time to reflect on it.
Passover is upon us and due to a mere coincidence we left Ukraine almost exactly eighteen years ago at the end of March to start our own Exodus from the Evil Empire.
American Jewry fought so that Soviet Government let us go. Us? Who is “us� How much Jewishness remained in me? Right before Moshe brought Jews out of Egypt they were on the last step of their impurity. That was true about me too.
My Mom was born in Warsaw, Poland, and by a miracle survived the WWII while her three older sisters with their entire families perished. She didn’t have her Bat Mitzvah celebration. She grew up with faint memories of being from a religious family. But apparently this was enough to keep her resisting the Soviet propaganda machine. My childhood memories of her always involve her listening to the radio trying to find frequencies not jammed by the Soviets. “You are listening to Voice of America†was her favorite sound. When I was still a child I was listening to a TV commentator who was talking about Israeli aggressors attacking neighborhood countries. Poor Gamal Abdel Nasser had to scramble whatever forces he had to save his country. It sounded horrible. How could Jews do this to other people? And then my Mom who still had one ear glued to the radio yelled “They won!!! They won!!!†Her eyes were smiling. My Mom always had a way to calm me down. We, Jews, were good people.
In 1970, Jews were thinking about leaving the Soviet Union. There was no family who wouldn’t consider it, and it was an agonizing decision. Those who attempted applying for exit visa could lose their jobs, their reputation destroyed; children harassed at school and still have their application turned down. Their lives could be finished right there. Only a few had enough courage to try.
I remember one evening my parents took me to visit their friend. They came to say “Good bye†to the old man who was lucky to be allowed to leave. Visiting him was an act of courage by itself. But I didn’t know what it was all about. We came to his apartment when it was already dark. He didn’t turn on lights. He and my parents talked in low voices. Then he took me to another room. I could hardly see anything there as curtains were completely drawn. He wanted to know how old I was. I was twelve. “When will you become thirteen?†he asked. I answered. “It’s too early to do it nowâ€, he said, “but I won’t be around when you turn thirteenâ€. Then he opened a little velvet bag and took out two small black boxes. Boxes were decorated with strange writings in an unfamiliar language. He opened one of them and put the inner box around my arm. Then he opened another one and placed something on my head. I felt cold touch of leather straps around my neck and realized that something big is happening. He asked me repeat after him some strange words that sent chills down my spine. Words sounded more like some kind of spell, but I felt their magic on myself. One word he pronounced almost the way opera singers would – the word bounced around this tiny room as if it was an amphitheater – “Adono-o-o-iâ€. This word seemed to mean something special for this old man. Then we quickly went home. In a few days he left for Israel and I never heard from him again.
When I was in college a friend of mine whispered to me he had a “self-published†book that he would allow me to read. The book title was “Exodus†by Leon Uris. I had no idea what or who Exodus was and never heard of Leon Uris either. The “self-published†book was a binder of photographed pages from the book. Each page was photographed with an ancient camera, and film and pictures were manually developed at home with red light and in a complete conspiracy. A book like this found at anybody’s home meant at the very least being thrown out of the college, and end of any professional career, and person who printed it would definitely end up in a labor camp. I figured all this after about three pages but couldn’t stop reading it. For a young man who grew up studying Scientific Communism and learning that international solidarity of the working people is the key to better life this book was an eye-opener. Jews acting not as a part of a society which merely tolerated them, but fighting for their own land? Jews coming all over the world to build their own country? Is this what Zionism was all about? I was taught Zionism was an apartheid regime primarily concerned with misplacing and mistreating “our Arab brethrenâ€. All of a sudden I could see the light. Yes, my people are fighting for their own land! I finished that book in two nights reading it under the cover and wiping off my fingerprints from each page. And just in time: my friend told me that there were signs that KGB was getting closer and he was asked to burn the book. And he did. I don’t know how many people managed to read this particular copy, but I was one of them. Whoever risked his life printing it didn’t do it in vain.
The same friend gave me a tape with Israeli music. I never heard Israeli music before. I liked Yiddish music. I liked the sound of it:
Lomir Ale ineynem, ineynem,
yiddishe mekabl ponim zayn
yiddishe mekabl ponim zayn
I had a tape of Berry sisters and heard them singing Hava Nagila. I knew it was in Hebrew, and the music was completely different from Yiddish:
Hava nagila
Hava nagila
Hava nagila venis’mecha
but the song didn’t have enough words to appreciate the sound of Hebrew. On the tape my friend gave me I heard the sounds that seemed out of this world:
Ose shalom bimromav
hu ya’ase shalom aleynu
ve’al kol Israel
ve’imru, imru amen.
or
Erev sel shoshanim
netse na el haboustan.
Mor, besamim ulevona
leragelekh miflan.
But the song that impressed me the most was this
Yerushalayim shel zahav
veshel nekhoshet veshel or,
halo lekol shirayikh ani kinor.
The singers were young people, probably my age or younger. They sang and I imagined the land of milk and honey before I even knew that this expression really belongs here. I didn’t understand what they were singing about but I knew I must have been about me.
Another friend from college invited me to his apartment. It turned out his father collected books in Yiddish and Hebrew and could actually read Yiddish. Any association with Yiddish was strongly frowned upon, but any association with Hebrew would be a criminal offense and would label the person as a Zionist spy and lend him in prison. Showing me these books was really a sign of trust. He opened one of the books, took out a piece of paper with Russian transliteration of a song and sang
Avir harim tsalul ka’yayin
Ve-rei’ah oranim
Nissa be-ru’ah ha’arbayim
Im kol pa’amonim
He sang very much off key. It wasn’t even close to an a mature singing. But he put as much of his soul in it as those young Israeli singers did. He sang and I could see the expression on his face. He actually saw white stones of Jerusalem, he saw Temple Mount, and Dead Sea, and Jericho.
A few months later I was called to KGB. A man behind the desk told me they would like to know whether my friend’s Dad had any foreign language books in his posession. Specifically, he asked, in Hebrew. Those of you who read “Harry Potter†are familiar with the creature “dementor†that sucks all the happiness out of your soul. This is what it was like to talk to this guy. But I didn’t tell him about Hebrew books. In addition to general disgust I had for him, how could I turn in a guy who sang
Yerushalayim shel zahav
Ve-shel nehoshet ve-shel or
Ha-lo le-khol shirayich
Ani kinnor
And now, two decades later, here I am. I sent my children to a Jewish School and they study Hebrew, they put on tefillin according to the Jewish Law and even I read a short paragraph in Hebrew during my youngest son Bar Mitzvah. My Jewishness was hanging in by a thread. No more. I am out of Egypt.
