Daniel Stein, Interpreter

PART FOUR

1. 1984, Kfar Saba

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ALENTINA

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ERDINANDOVNA

Dear, sweet Valentina,

It seems like unbelievable good fortune! When we had quite lost hope that Efim could become a serving priest, everything suddenly changed as if someone had waved a magic wand. Amazing as it may seem, it is Daniel who has got everything moving. He was received at the Ministry of Religious Affairs by the Minister herself, a woman, can you believe it? I do not know why the meeting took place, or even whether he was summoned by the Ministry or chose to go there himself, but what was being discussed was the existence of Christian churches in Israel. The lady minister said, We know that you love Israel and we need the kind of Christian Church which will not quietly engage in subversive games against us. Daniel said he loves this land, conducts sightseeing excursions through it, and is also helping to build it, although the minister might not agree with that. This lady is fairly young and, as Daniel said, very perspicacious and even witty. She commented that the further Christian building progresses, the more it resembles the Tower of Babel. “We Israelis would like to build our little orchard in the shade of that great tower but at a considerable distance from it, so that when it falls down, it does not bury our modest borders under its rubble.”

Daniel said that Christianity builds relations between man and God, and the aggressiveness of modern civilization shows itself quite independently of denominations, while any dialogue between man and God leads to the restraining of aggression and to peacemaking.

She laughed and said that Israeli society completely disproves his point of view because there is not a country in the world where there is so much religious tension. Daniel said he had no answer to that. Then she asked whether he could recommend priests who love Israel as he does himself, or at least do not hate it like the majority of priests she knows. She wanted priests capable of peacemaking and not of fanning interreligious conflicts. At this, Daniel named Efim! I do not know how the mechanism works, but shortly afterward Efim received an invitation to visit the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission and went to the Church of the Trinity. He supposed he would be received by an archimandrite, but was met instead by someone who introduced himself as Nikolai Ivanovich and who proceeded to interview him.

Nikolai Ivanovich is a kind of personnel officer, and one may suppose that finally the letter from the abbot in Vilnius has had an effect. Efim is now awaiting appointment to a parish.

A week ago we went on a magical trip to the Dead Sea and spent two days in a guesthouse in one of the oldest kibbutzes. They have a marvelous botanical garden, old houses built by the first settlers, and one new building where they rent rooms to visitors. Everything is very clean and pretty, and there are rare plants and even a baobab tree. The whole kibbutz is situated on a hill. In one direction there is a view of the Dead Sea, and in good weather when there is no haze you can see Jordan. In the other direction there is a ravine at the bottom of which a river flows in the spring before drying up. In this rocky ravine there are a lot of caves and we were shown one in which, according to legend, the young David hid from King Saul who was persecuting him.

It was after this journey, which in some sense could be called our honeymoon, that our marriage was consummated. I know I have to thank you for your advice, and another doctor here to whom we had to go for consultations, but most of all God who united us by his great mercy. Efim and I are very happy and full of hope. Of course we are no longer young, but our prayers for the granting of offspring are now supported by the requisite actions.

One more substantial and also pleasant piece of information: the publishing house has proposed that Efim should edit Readings on Reading, a series of domestic lectures by Father Mikhail which you are very familiar with. The fee is modest, but I am almost certain that they will appreciate Efim and continue to give him work in the future. I hope that he will ultimately succeed in publishing his Reflections on the Liturgy there.

I think Father Mikhail already knows about this favorable development, but if not, please give him the glad tidings. The book should come off the presses at the end of this or the beginning of next year.

I will let you know the moment our news ripens.

With love,

Teresa

1984, Be’er Sheva

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ROM A LETTER FROM

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ERESA TO

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ALENTINA

F

ERDINANDOVNA

… hot and stuffy, oppressive and dehydrating. The wind is from the Negev Desert. I know now for a fact that hell is fiery and not icy. A hot, inebriating wind which blows away your brains and all your thoughts, your heart and all your emotions, and you wait for night when it will not be so hot, but your expectations are disappointed. The Hamsin blows and turns you into a cliff which feels nothing or a pile of rocks or a handful of sand. You pour water into yourself every five minutes, because without it you would be like a withered plant within hours. People do not sweat properly here because as soon as sweat is secreted on the surface of your skin it evaporates and the water you drank is already gone. I am hardly able to eat. Sometimes at night time I gnaw an apple or salt biscuit with sweet tea.

Efim laughs and says that salt herring with sweet tea is a favorite Jewish treat. We have been here for two months and until now I haven’t been able to write because I could not get up and put pen to paper. I have become so thin that my clothes dangle from me as if I were a clothes hanger. I think I have lost about 10 kilograms. Efim has also lost weight, but he copes with the heat far better than I do.

The little church is wonderful, small, built of stone, and no services have been held in it for a long time because after the last priest, a Greek monk, died the few parishioners dispersed. How amazed Efim was when he discovered several Jews from Russia among his new parishioners, including a couple who lecture at the local university. Two large Bedouin families also came, several Greeks, and a Japanese man married to a Russian-Israeli woman.

The Japanese converted to Orthodoxy from Lutheranism. Not even the D—l knows what is going on in his head, but Efim very entertainingly relayed their discussion of ethics as seen from the viewpoint of a Shintoist Japanese and a modern Christian. When he was young, the Japanese was a Shintoist, but converted to Lutheranism back in Japan. He came to Israel 20 years ago with a Protestant tourist group, met an Orthodox monk in the Old Town whom he took as his teacher, and followed him into an Orthodox monastery near Jerusalem, where he lived for three years. This Shintoist Zionist decided to settle here temporarily but is now a permanent resident.

He is an architect and currently works for a large firm. He has married a young Russian girl who was studying at the University here where he was a teacher. He is a great zealot of Orthodoxy and he and Efim found they had much common ground. Another parishioner, the only one who knows the service properly and sings well, which means he acts not just as regent but as the entire choir, is a Leningrad doctor, Andrey Yosifovich. He has a large family of four or five children. Efim brought him to see me and he gave me some homoeopathic medicines which seem to help a little.

So that is our handful of Orthodox worshippers, all of them people with problems, both moral and material. Our own situation has not improved either, in fact it has become worse. Efim is no longer receiving benefits, and only receives irregular payments from the Patriarchate, which doesn’t pay salaries but unpredictably gives money “for expenses.” Everything is in the hands of Nikolai Ivanovich whom I have already mentioned, not of the archimandrite as you might expect. Nikolai Ivanovich’s job in the patriarchate is as a driver!

From time to time I feel so nauseated, and this kind of heat will continue for at least three months. How am I going to live through it? It will be hot afterward too, but not to such an intolerable degree.

Yesterday I had a strange and very unpleasant dream. It was as if my belly opened like a flower, the petals separated, and out flew a dragon. It was a very handsome dragon with colorful silky wings shot with a green and pink sheen. It flew up into the sky and somersaulted beautifully and I realized it was not simply flying but writing something in the air with its long body. Then I noticed I had a string in my hand which was guiding it and it was actually me who was doing the writing by directing its flight. What I was writing, however, I could not tell but I knew it was something important and if I tried hard enough I would understand. It was frightening. I told Efim about the dream. He was surprised and anxious because he has come to see all my dreams and visions as temptations or mental illness. He said he had dreamed something similar but had been so confused he decided not to tell me about it. Now he told me he dreamed his belly split into quarters and a large colorful bubble came out, like a soap bubble but more solid. It, too, broke away from him and floated up into the sky. It’s the same dream don’t you think?

1984, Be’er Sheva

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ROM A LETTER FROM

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ERESA TO

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ALENTINA

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ERDINANDOVNA

Andrey Yosifovich came, examined me again and asked when I had my last period. I could not remember. I have been feeling so ill all this time and have become so thin that I had somehow managed to forget. It was certainly two months ago or more. Andrey Yosifovich told me to go and see a gynecologist. Valechka, I have never been to a gynecologist in my life! A few months ago on your recommendation, Efim and I went to a sexologist, but I could not allow him to give me a medical examination. I felt I would prefer to die. The sexologist did not insist and said that this negative reaction was natural given my anomaly. He gave us a set of exercises which we performed and the problem resolved itself, but the idea of going to a gynecologist for an examination simply horrified me

I told Andrey Yosifovich about this and then he said he thought I was pregnant. I wept with fear for 24 hours and then went to see the doctor. Dear Valentina, it has been confirmed. The doctor, fortunately, was a woman. Hearing that I am 42 and that this is my first pregnancy, she wrote me a letter to a specialist clinic where I will be given some unusual genetic analysis and something else which I did not understand.

When I told Efim about it he said nothing for two days, then told me he felt exactly like Zacharias. He felt an inner need to be silent because he was afraid that if he spoke he might frighten the miracle away. I understand him.

I ask for your prayers, dear Valentina Ferdinandovna. Do not be worried if you do not get any letters from me for a time.

2. February, 1985, Be’er Sheva

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FIM

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OVITAS TO

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ALENTINA

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ERDINANDOVNA

MARVELOUS BOY BORN WEIGHT 2350 HEIGHT 46 CM EFIM

3. March 1985, Be’er Sheva

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ERDINANDOVNA

Dear Valentina,

The baby and I have left hospital. He is tiny and very pretty. We are completely happy. We have called him Itzhak. What else could we have called a child given to us at such a late age and under such circumstances? We feel what has happened is a miracle from God. The little boy is not quite right, he has Down’s syndrome, as we were warned in the middle of pregnancy. Because of that they offered to give us a termination but we refused without hesitation. Now he is with us, our baby boy. He is very calm, very sweet, with little oriental eyes. He looks Japanese. He is not good at sucking, but I have a lot of milk and I am constantly expressing it because he can’t suck at the breast yet. I feed him with my milk but from a bottle.

It is an amazing feeling having three of us. Efim decided to have him circumcised before the christening. He invited a rabbi he knows who brought a specialist with a stone knife, as in ancient times. I was terribly afraid, but everything went well without complications, and when the little wound healed the baby was christened in our church. Daniel christened him. After all, our son was born with his blessing! Daniel came to us with a pile of presents, and even brought a pram. He held Itzhak in his arms all the time, cuddling him, and I have never seen an elderly person melt like that at the sight of a baby. Perhaps it was because our little boy really is terribly sweet. That same day they christened Andrey Yosifovich’s daughter too. She is their fifth child and was born three days after ours. We invited Andrey Yosifovich to be his godfather. By comparison with our little boy his daughter is simply huge, a veritable Brünnhilde, but her parents are also very large.

The weather is beautiful now, the short spring is not over and the heat has not yet begun. One of my new friends has invited me to move for the summer and stay with her near Tel Aviv. It is not so hot by the sea, but we decided not to be separated when there is no great necessity. Efim borrowed some money from the bank and bought an air conditioner. It uses a lot of electricity but we will manage somehow. The main thing for us is not to be parted. Itzhak is entitled to a separate benefit, and that will help us to pay off the air conditioner. We enjoy every minute. The baby has given new meaning to our lives. It is just over a month since he was born and we can’t imagine how we managed to live without him. I will write.

Love from

Teresa.

Oh, I forgot to tell you that Mother Ioanna has painted an icon for little Itzhak, “Akeidah,” the sacrifice of Isaac. A baby is lying on the altar, Abraham is standing with a knife in his hands, and the quiet smiling face of a ram with curving spiral horns is peeping out of the bushes. When I look at this icon it brings tears to my eyes. Can you imagine, Mother Ioanna came to the christening with this icon, in her monastery’s car, and, incidentally, left some money in an envelope, the exact cost of the air conditioner. I keep going on about miracles.

PS. I forgot to say that Father Mikhail’s book has been published, under a pseudonym of course, and Efim has been sent reviews of it. The best is from a Russian émigré newspaper. The worst is also from the Russian émigré community. Efim made a photocopy which I will put in the envelope. I hope it reaches you. There have been no comments about it from Russia. I suspect the book simply has not made it there.

4. 1985

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ROM THE NEWSPAPER

RUSSKII PUT’

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Readings on Reading, Andrey Belov, Munster: Poisk Publishers

The author’s premise is that the Bible is first and foremost a work for literary historians, like The Divine Comedy or The Lay of the Host of Igor. Accordingly he awards pride of place in Bible study to human knowledge—philology, history, and archaeology. This aggregate of sciences Belov calls “Biblical criticism” and this approach defines his reading of the Bible. Moreover, he considers it permissible to advocate a curious view which is profoundly at variance with the position of the Church. According to Orthodox doctrine, the Bible is the Word of God. That is, it is the only book in the world whose author is God Himself. The role of the person who wrote down the text, whether a prophet or an apostle, was merely to register in human language the divine revelation communicated by the Holy Spirit. Andrey Belov, however, has his own ideas about this.

In Orthodoxy there is a definite intellectual discipline whose basis is that Holy Scripture may be interpreted only in accordance with the sacred tradition of the Church and in agreement with the opinion of the Holy Fathers. The Nineteenth Rule of the Sixth Ecumenical Assembly reads: “Primates of churches should … teach all the clergy and people the words of piety, selecting from Divine Scripture the understanding and discourse of truth and not transgressing the already established boundaries and customs of the God-bearing Fathers; and if the word of the Scriptures shall be examined, then not otherwise than that it be expounded as it was expounded by the luminaries and teachers of the Church in their writings … in order not to depart from what is meet.”

This is not “narrowness,” not “despotism,” but acknowledgment of the divinely inspired nature of Holy Scripture. Accordingly, all researches which are not sanctioned by the Church are without foundation and harmful.

Andrey Belov, the author of this questionable book, proceeds from different premises. For exegesis of biblical texts he adduces, alongside such Holy Fathers as St. John Chrysostomos and Grigoriy Nissky, the teachings of such heretics condemned by the Church as Feodor Mopsuetsky, Pelagius, and even modern freethinking philosophers of the like of Archpriest Sergey Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Vladimir Soloviov whose authority can in no wise be ranked alongside the authority of the Fathers of the Church. Belov goes even further, drawing on the arguments of Catholic and Protestant theologians and sometimes even of natural scientists—physicists, biologists, and such like.

Books of this kind are harmful and damaging for the Orthodox mind and can be welcomed only by people profoundly hostile to true Orthodoxy. Any person who puts his trust in the ideas expounded by Andrey Belov will fall into the embrace of anti-Christianity, which is worse even than “pure” atheism.

Archimandrite Constantine (Antiminsov)

5. 1985, Jerusalem

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Dear Mishenka,

I have been sent your book Readings on Reading. The title seems ill-chosen. I have started reading but it is a slow business. I have to use a magnifying glass because my eyes are now quite hopeless. It is interesting to read. It reminds me of our elder, and how well he said, “To whom wisdom is not given let him not speak words of wisdom, but read in simplicity; but whoever has been given understanding, let him discourse on reading.” The Bible is a book of unbounded profundity, but each person draws from it in accordance with his faculties. The elder, although in old age he became very mild and deprecated his ego as much as is possible, in his younger years was an educated man with particular opinions and judgments. I remember him from the Religio-Philosophical Society, and he was excellent in conversation and debating with the greatest minds of our time.

Your book deepens and extends understanding of the Bible. It is audacious and in part impertinent. I am surrounded in the main by people with little education, meek, mainly with a monastic vocation, and monasticism in our times is in prayer, it seems to me, and not in teaching. There are no teachers now in the sense that was understood by the medieval Church. Those were learned theologians, interpreters, and translators, but today’s are in the main conservators. If the present Russian regime has not completely crushed Orthodoxy, then that is to the credit not of learned theologians but of obscure old women and loyal priests who have professed Christ even unto death. As if we do not know that an army of them has perished in this battle.

Perhaps the times are changing and we should now be thinking not only of preservation but also of more profound understanding. Your critical thoughts about the patriarchs, the examination of their deeds from the standpoint of modern morality, stirred me greatly. Your thinking about the evolution of the idea of God in history—where did you get that from, is it something you have discovered yourself?—seems to me in part seductive and in part engrossing.

You also write, or rather provide a quotation to the effect that, in the last days there will begin an “unprecedented abuse—of matter by man.” Where this comes from is not indicated in the book. The thought, however, is in itself extremely profound: all those robots, machines for supporting human life when a person is already dead, artificial organs, and almost conception in test tubes,—are so difficult to take in and evaluate from a Christian viewpoint. Moreover, my head is no longer as clear as it was when I was young. It seemed to me also that the book’s bibliography is not very well compiled, or is that my eyesight? Reading it with a magnifying glass is torture.

It is a very substantial book. I’m quite amazed that in your village you manage to maintain such a high level, although we have long understood that we should stay where we have been placed and all that is needed will come of its own accord.

Heartfelt greetings to your family. I will not send the icon. I just cannot work anymore. May God bless you.

With love,

Ioanna.

6. April, 1985

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ROM A NOTE FROM

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OVITAS TO

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IKOLAI

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VANOVICH

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AIKO

Dear Nikolai Ivanovich,

In compliance with our agreement I have to inform you that since the New Year I have performed four rites of baptism: I have christened my newborn son, Isaac; the newborn daughter of the local doctor, Andrey Yosifovich Rubin; the cousin of our parishioner, Raisa Semyonovna Rapaport, at the age of 47 years; and a young Japanese student at the local university (Yahiro Sumato).

The congregation is increasing not only as the result of newly baptized infants and adults, but also with the appearance of new immigrant families, the Lukovich family from Belorussia and a young couple from Leningrad whose name is Kazhdan. The wife is Jewish and the husband is as yet unbaptized but inclined to adopt Christianity. These additions gladden me and give grounds to hope that the Be’er Sheva community will grow and strengthen.

There are of course difficulties and, mindful of our talk, I would like to ask you to find resources for mending the roof. Our district does not have a great deal of rain, indeed, on the contrary, annual rainfall is below the average for the country as a whole, but a single downpour can spoil a modest fresco. Andrey Rubin, the best qualified of our parishioners, assesses the work at around 5,000 shekels. We also need to repair the porch. We have partly mended it through the efforts of parishioners, but one of the supports needs to be replaced and that is something we cannot do with our own hands.

I enclose an account of our expenditure. I have taken 1,200 shekels from the amount sent, for my personal needs. If you were able to find a way of paying me even the most minimal salary that would ease our situation, the more so since the addition to our family entails extra expenditure and has temporarily deprived my wife of the opportunity of working.

We invite His Beatitude to visit our weekly service, which usually takes place on Sundays at 18:30 hours.

Father Efim (Dovitas)

7. 1 April 1985

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OCUMENT

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MARKED “SECRET”

MINISTRY OF RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS

In accordance with our agreement I am sending the quarterly report with a list of citizens of the State of Israel who have accepted baptism in the period 1/01–25/03/1985 in the churches of the ROC.

1. Anishchenko, Petr Akimovich, b. 1930, Church of the Trinity, Jerusalem

2. Lvovskaya, Natalia Aaronovna, b. 1949, Ein Karem, Gorny Convent

3. Rukhadze, Georgiy Noevich, b. 1958, Monastery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem

4. Rubina, Eva, b. 1985, parents Rubin, Andrey Yosifovich and Rubina, Elena Antonovna (maiden name Kondakova), Church of St. John the Warrior, Be’er Sheva

5. Rapoport, Raisa Semyonovna, b. 1938, Church of St. John the Warrior, Be’er Sheva

6. Dovitas, Isaak, b. 1985, Church of St. John the Warrior, Be’er Sheva

Total baptized, 11 persons, of whom citizens of Israel (listed above), 6 persons.

Kindly be advised that my superiors await your response in respect of category TT individuals. We hope to receive the relevant notification no later than 15/04 of the current year.

N. Laiko

DOCUMENT 11/345-E

MARKED “TOP SECRET”

FOR N. I. LAIKO

23-34-98/124510 IYR UKL-11

Ir. Al. - Kadomtseva, Irina Alexeyevna, French citizen, Poisk Publishers;

Author - Mikhail Kuleshov, pseudonym Andrey Belov.

Informant: Ef. D.

8. 1984, Hebron

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ROM A LETTER FROM

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HIMES TO HIS MOTHER

, Z

INAIDA

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HIMES

… details. I was called up for the “miluim,” a six-week retraining period for reservists. Deborah was left alone with the children, but our team is very solid and I knew she would be looked after. Deborah is a person who cannot bear having to ask for anything. Everything she can do for herself she invariably does. She needed to sort out our bank loan so she put the children in the car and drove to Jerusalem. We have a bus which takes about one hour to Jerusalem, the No. 160. It is armored and has security, but she decided to take the car. It wasn’t even particularly urgent, the forms could perfectly well have waited, it was about some insignificant penalty. The children were in the back seat, the baby sleeping in a basket, the boys on either side holding it. On the way back, right next to our house, at the crossroads as she was about to turn in, 30 meters from the checkpoint, the car was fired on. Deborah heard the glass breaking behind her, put her foot on the accelerator, and within five minutes was home. She drove into the yard, looked at the backseat, and saw Binyomin sitting in blood, silent, his eyes open wide. The blood was not his, it was the blood of Arik. The bullet hit him in the neck. Either it was a sniper, or ordained by fate. Deborah believes this was the revenge of the Arab workers I drove out when the house was being built. I haven’t been able to write to you for two months. Deborah is pregnant. She is silent and will not say a word. Her parents came from Brooklyn. Now they have left. That is our news. Our boy was buried in the old Jewish cemetery where Yishai, the father of King David, is buried and his great-grandmother Ruth. At that time nobody had heard of any Arabs. Then for seven centuries the Arabs owned these lands, profaned and fouled everything. One hundred and eighty years ago, Jews bought them out, and again the Arabs slaughtered everybody. That was in 1929, and now the cemetery has been partly restored. An artist from Moscow we know, whose newborn baby died, buried him in the cemetery ten years ago, without permission from any authorities, of course. Deborah decided to bury our little boy in this ancient place. There is a view from there over the whole of Judea. Our Arieh’s funeral was attended by all of Jewish Hebron. Everybody loved him, he was always smiling, and the first word he said was “lovely.” Deborah tries to speak Hebrew to the children, but in spite of that it’s mostly English.

Soon after this terrible event, our local Rabbi Eliyahu, with whom we are great friends, invited us to move not far from the cemetery. We sold our new house and on the site of the old Jewish quarter of Admot Yishai we set up our caravan. Seven mobile homes, seven families. I do not want to restore an old house, I want to build a new one, I already have experience of that. We will leave here only to go to that land. Do not be afraid, Mama. I hope we will live a long time and have new children here, but I will never leave this place, no matter what anyone says. I don’t give a damn that the graves of our forefathers are here. If Adam and Chava are buried here, Avraham and Sarah, Itzhak and Yakov, fine, but what holds Deborah and me here is the grave of our son. You will have to agree that the graves of children are a different matter from the graves of ancestors from thousands of years ago.

The Well of Avraham really is next to our house, though. I send you our last photograph of Arieh and the view from our mobile home over land which we will never leave.

INSCRIPTION ON PHOTOGRAPH: This is our little house. We planted the orchard behind it ourselves. Deborah is standing with her back to you and you cannot see her enormous belly.

9. 1984, Moscow

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INAIDA

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HIMES TO HER SON

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ERSHON

My dearest son,

We have been weeping for the past week over the photograph of Arik whom we were never able to see. You know what losses we have endured. Your elder brother died when he was 10 as a result of a terrible mistake by the doctors. I lost a beloved husband before he was even 50. The history of our family is terrible. We have been killed young and old, men and women. Almost nobody has died of old age in their own bed. What has happened to you, though, is unimaginable. Knowing how you hate wordiness, I will not describe to you all our thoughts and feelings about it, but simply tell you that Svetlana and I have decided to come to Israel. It will not be tomorrow, because although it is already two months since Svetlana left Sergey and is living at home with Anya, it will take some time to formalize the divorce. I also need time to complete my work, to get my class through to their school-leaving exams, and sort out my pension. What a panic there will be at school when I announce I am retiring! I carry all the literature teaching in the older classes because the second teacher is very weak. I cannot imagine how this ridiculous Tamara Nikolayevna is supposed to teach nineteenth-century Russian literature. She’s completely uneducated. For your part, find out what documents we need here, and yourself sort out whatever is needed in Israel.

I keep wondering what my departed Misha would say in this situation, and I feel that he would approve of our decision. Even though you and your father were constantly arguing and quarrelling, and you left home before you were even 18, your father always loved you most of all. It seems to me that what he liked about you were precisely those characteristics which he did not possess himself.

What you called cowardice was actually his boundless love for his family, for all of us. He was prepared to put up with anything in order to preserve the life of his children. When Vitya died of straightforward appendicitis, Misha told me—he allowed himself to say this just once in his life!—what a dreadful curse lay on our family. His grandfather had buried his son, and now he was doing the same. Who could have imagined that it would happen to a third generation?

1984, Moscow

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HIMES

Dear Grisha,

My congratulations to you and Deborah on the birth of your son! How I am longing to see your children, such a large family, and you at its head! Of course I could never have imagined, and neither could your father, that you would choose this way of life. I am happy to the bottom of my heart. I can just imagine how difficult it is to raise so many children at one time. When I was young all our friends had one or two children, and two was regarded as almost heroic. I suppose the only family with many children was that of Rustam our yard keeper, who was a Tartar. You must remember him. His son Akhmed was in your class at primary school and Raya studied together with Svetlana. I can’t even remember how many other children they had. Only now, when I’m an old lady, do I realize what joy and riches it is to have many children. Svetlana has divorced Sergey but unfortunately he has refused outright to give permission for Anya to emigrate. When Svetlana tried to tell him the child would get a much better education and have far better prospects, he said absolutely definitely that he would never give permission and she could just forget it. Svetlana is in a very bad mood, saying nothing and crying, and it is depressing to talk to her. I do not think I have the moral right to emigrate without her. She is a helpless sort of person and for all her splendid spiritual qualities has difficulty coping with life’s everyday problems. I went to Leningrad for three days for Alexander Alexandrovich’s 70th birthday and when I came back found a radiator in the house that had burst just after I left. When I got back three days later, there were still puddles of water around the place. Now I shall have to do something to the floors. The parquet has all buckled. It’s very expensive to replace and we will probably just have to cover it with linoleum. If she had at least mopped up the water straight away and not waited for me to come back. She just cried. So do you think I could emigrate and leave someone as helpless as that behind?

Anyway, Grisha, it will have to wait for now. I can’t apply without her. In any case, I hope that when Sergey has new children—he has married a colleague—he will nevertheless give permission for Anya to leave.

Please send more photographs. It is the joy of my life to look at those wonderful children’s faces. They are all so good looking!

Don’t be angry that I can’t just decide to come on my own. Of course, I realize that my place is with my grandchildren, and I could help Deborah and teach the children Russian and literature. I could teach them to read Pushkin and Tolstoy. That is what I am really good at! It greatly saddens me that your little children do not speak Russian. If you only knew what a clever and talented niece you have. She even writes poetry!

I kiss you, dear Grisha. I greatly look forward to your letters. Since you emigrated, the mailbox has a big place in my life, which in other families would be occupied by a pet cat or dog.

Mama

10. 1985, Hebron

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HIMES

INSCRIPTION ON A PHOTOGRAPH:

Mama! Our little family celebration. This year for the first time we had a harvest from the beds beside the house. It is a little vegetable garden which the children put such a lot of time into. In addition to our own children there are the two sons of Rab Eliyahu and the big girl is our neighbor’s daughter.

11. 1987, Moscow

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ETTER FROM

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INAIDA TO

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ERSHON

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HIMES

Dear Grisha,

My congratulations to you and Deborah on the birth of your son! How I long to see your little children. Your family is growing and that is a great joy. I find it hard to picture you in the role of patriarch!

Thank Deborah for the photographs. What wonderful children! You are such a lovely couple! Svetlana immediately noticed that all the boys have inherited their mother’s red hair while your daughter looks like you. There is a Russian belief that if a girl resembles her father, it will bring her happiness. Anya took the photographs of her cousins to school. She is very proud of them. Anya is a good girl, top of her class. Svetlana and I have hired an English teacher for her, Lyubov Sergeyevna. You may remember her. She worked with me at the school in the 1970s but then changed jobs.

I give private lessons, too, so we get by entirely satisfactorily in material terms. I very much love my profession, but have to admit that cramming is not as satisfying as teaching in a school, although of course I get good results. Last year I had eight private pupils and they all passed literature with top marks and went to the university. How it saddens me that your little children do not know Russian!

A few days ago we heard on the radio about disturbances in Hebron, and I am just trembling with fear for your life. Tell me, dear Grisha, can you really not move to a less dangerous area? If you were on your own I could understand it, but a family which has been through such a tragedy, can you really stay in such a perilous location? You said yourself that the German Jews who refused to leave Germany when Hitler came to power were crazy. I remember very well that you said they had been seduced by German culture, made the wrong choice, and paid for it with their lives and those of their children. Why should you, seeing such deadly danger, stubbornly persist in clinging to such a place?

I know you have your own convictions and arguments, but sometimes our circumstances are more powerful than our arguments, and sometimes life forces us to compromise. Do not be angry with me for saying this but understand me correctly. I am so worried for you and your children.

All my love,

Mama

12. 1987, Hebron

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INAIDA

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HIMES

Dear Mama!

Have you still not understood that we are talking about our life and not about where we choose to live? Jewish life can only be lived on the soil of Israel. It is not a matter of reuniting families but of restoring our destiny and history in its highest sense. You have no idea why we are here!

Twenty years ago Rabbi Shlomo Goren, a general in the Israel Defence Forces, entered the Cave of Makhpelah, took in a scroll of the Torah, and a Jew prayed there for the first time in 700 years. Since 1226, Jews and Christians had been forbidden to enter this holy place. Rab Shlomo Goren drove into Hebron in a jeep with only his driver, ahead of the whole army, and since that time Jews have been returning here. I will not leave.

We live here and will continue to live here, and I request that I should hear no more of these pathetic words because I am losing the last remnants of my sentimental attitude toward my close relatives. Your bleating about Svetlana and her problems with her former husband is simply ridiculous. My opinion is that you should come here so that your granddaughter can live in this land. Under Jewish law a child born to a Jewish mother is Jewish. For the opportunity to move here I spent five years in the labor camps. By remaining in Russia you deny yourself a future.

I find what you say about teaching my children Russian absurd. They have two languages, Hebrew and English. Deborah thinks they need to learn English and I do not object, but all the children will receive a religious upbringing and are already doing so. Rabbi Eliyahu teaches them, and in our settlement there are five times as many children as grown-ups. They were all born near the graves of their forefathers and are unlikely to have any need of the language of Pushkin and Tolstoy, as you put it. When my sons undergo their bar mitzvah at the age of thirteen, they will read the Torah in Hebrew, and believe me, the elder is already making great progress in his studies. This generation of children must be able equally well to read the Torah and to hold a rifle. We have called our younger son Yehuda.

If you want me to reply to your letters, please do not write nonsense, and give me less advice. That’s what your daughter Svetlana is there for.

Your son

Gershon

13. 1989, Moscow

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ERSHON

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HIMES

Dear Grisha,

I do not know whether my news will gladden or distress you. Svetlana is getting married again. On the one hand I am very glad for her, on the other I realize that this will again change all our plans. You will, I am sure, remember her fiancé. He is her classmate Slava Kazakov. He was in love with her from Grade 6 but she paid no attention to him at all. Imagine, they had a school reunion party, met again, and this new relationship flared up. He has already moved in with us. Svetlana is simply blooming. He is exceptionally caring and attentive. Incidentally, he is very nice to Anya. You must know how difficult it is to get by at present. I have to stand in queues from morning till dinner-time if I want to buy any food at all. After dinner there is nothing in the shops. It is just as well that where Svetlana works they occasionally give them food as payment in kind. Also, Slava’s sister works as a manager in a department store and has good links with the food shops, so Slava, too, brings bags home once a week with meat, cheese, and buckwheat. To a large extent that frees me from having to run around in the mornings.

Anya has been admitted to ballet school and since September I have been taking her to the classes. She is very enthusiastic, dances all the time and likes listening to music. She has turned out very musical. You wrote that Shoshanah is also studying music. Quite certainly she has got that from her grandfather. Misha was very gifted and could quickly learn to play any musical instrument. He even learned to play the accordion. I am sending you a photograph of Anya, so that your children should know what their cousin in Moscow looks like.

Your Aunt Rimma, about whom you never ask, has been found to have breast cancer. She was taken to the hospital, operated on, and is now undergoing a course of chemotherapy. They say the medical services in Israel are very good and perform real miracles. If only we could send her there for treatment. You wrote that you have a friend in the settlement who is a surgeon. Perhaps you could ask him if he could help her in some way. She is ten years younger than me and was always such a healthy woman.

All my love, dear son,

Your Mama

PS Did Deborah receive the toys I mailed two months ago?

14. 1990, Hebron

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INAIDA

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HIMES

What is this stuff you are writing to me about, Mama? To tell the truth, I don’t even want to hear! I remember that goat, Slava. He is highly suitable for my sister in that they are equally stupid. Ballet, accordions, special food deliveries, poor Rimma, who all her life was a complete bitch, and who when I was in prison was afraid even to telephone you. What kind of drivel is this? You are living on a different planet which is of no interest to me whatsoever. Live your life how ever you like.

Everything here is fine. Deborah will send you photographs of our second daughter, who was born two weeks ago.

Look after yourself,

Gershon

15. December 1987, Haifa

F

ROM

H

ILDA’S DIARY

After the service Musa arrived. He wanted to talk to Daniel. Pale, gloomy. I have never seen him like that before. I suddenly realized it was just that he has grown old. His hair has become lighter as it went gray and his face has darkened, not from the sun but from age. Even his mouth, which was always so striking, has faded and sagged. My heart suddenly sank. We have both grown older and have strangled our poor love. When the people had gone, Musa and Daniel sat down in our little room. I made tea. Musa declined. I wanted to leave, but Daniel told me to stay. I did not know why. It seemed to me that Musa wanted to talk to him alone. Anyway, I sat down. Musa took an Arab newspaper out of his pocket and pushed it over to Daniel. He looked at it and said, “You read it. I don’t read Arabic fluently.”

Musa read excerpts from Arafat’s speech: “Oh, heroic sons of Gaza! Oh, proud sons of the West Bank! Oh, courageous sons of Galilee! Oh, stoical sons of the Negev! The flame of revolution raised against the occupying Zionists will not be extinguished until our land has been liberated from the ravenous occupying forces. If anybody takes it into his mind to stop the Intifada before it achieves its ultimate aim, I shall fire a dozen bullets into his chest.”

He put the newspaper down and said things could not be worse. Daniel’s face had also fallen. Musa shook his head and covered his eyes with his hand. “We need to leave. My uncle is in California now. Perhaps he can find me a job or give me one,” Musa said. “You are an Israeli.” “I am an Arab. There’s no getting around that.” “You are a Christian.” “I am a bag of flesh and bones, and I have four children.”

“Pray and work,” Daniel said quietly. “My Muslim brothers pray five times a day,” Musa shouted. “They perform namaz five times a day! There’s no way I can out-pray them! And we are praying to the same One God!” “Don’t yell, Musa, try rather to see it from His point of view: the Jews are praying to Him to destroy the Arabs, the Arabs are asking Him to destroy the Jews. What is He supposed to do?”

Musa laughed. “Yes, He should never have got involved with such a bunch of idiots!” “He has no other peoples, only such as these. I cannot tell you to stay here, Musa. Over the past years half my parishioners have left Israel. I am thinking myself that although God never suffers defeats, what is happening today is a real victory for mutual hatred.”

Musa left. I saw him to the door. He stroked my head and said, “I wish we could have a second life.”

Daniel’s car was being repaired and he asked me to drive him to brother Roman, the abbot of the Arab church where he was allowed to conduct services in the early 1960s. I was amazed. He and Roman had quarrelled and since Roman changed the lock on the cemetery gates, Daniel had not wanted to talk to him. I took him to Roman’s apartment. I saw them embrace in the doorway. I saw how pleased Roman was. Daniel knew that when the patriarchate tried to take away the Church of Elijah by the Spring, Roman had gone to the Patriarch himself and told him that not one of the Arab Christian communities in Haifa would agree to occupy it. The Patriarch just shrugged and said, “Come now, come now, it is a misunderstanding. Let us leave everything as it is.” Daniel did not go to thank Roman for his intervention, but I know he was very pleased. Now they were meeting again for the first time after all these years.

I drove home thinking that if there was to be another bloodbath, like in 1929, I would go back to Germany. I would not choose to live in the midst of bloodshed. Admittedly Daniel says that people can get used to all manner of vile things: captivity, camps, prison, but ought we to? Probably Musa is right. He needs to go away so that his children do not have to learn to live like that.

But what about me?

16. 1988, Haifa

F

ROM

H

ILDA’S DIARY

I never thought I would be in this cemetery again. Yesterday we buried Musa, his brother, father, wife, and some other relatives. It was overcast and raining. What a dreadful place this Israel is. There is a war here inside every person which has neither rules nor boundaries nor sense nor justification. Nor the hope that it will ever end. Musa had just turned 50. He had applied to leave to work in America and had bought the tickets. His uncle had sent a photograph of the house and garden in which he and his family were to live. Musa was hired as a gardener by one of the richest people in the world, who now will have to make do with another gardener.

The coffin was sealed. I saw neither his face nor his hands. I have no photograph of him. I have no family, children, relatives, not even a native language. I haven’t known for a long time which is my first language, Hebrew or German. We were lovers for almost 20 years, then it ended. Not because I stopped loving him, but because my own heart told me that was enough. He understood. These last years we met only in church, when we stood side by side and both knew there was nobody closer to us in the world. The tenderness was still there but we had buried our desires very deeply. I shall remember him as I saw him that last time, three weeks ago or so, with his darkened face, gray hair, prematurely aged, and with the gold tooth which glinted when he smiled.

He hadn’t offered to see me home, and that was right. Turning, I waved to him, and he looked after me, and I went away with a light heart because I felt that now I had a different life, without the madness of love against which we had both struggled so ingloriously and not won but simply grown deadly tired and surrendered. I felt empty and free inside and I thought, thank God, a little more space has been freed in my heart. Let it be filled not by human love, selfish and hungry, but by another love which knows no selfishness. I felt, too, that my ego was much diminished. Daniel remained for the wake but I left. A nauseating smell of roast chicken rose mercilessly from the tables.

This morning Daniel and I went to a cheap supermarket to buy disposable plates, incontinence pads for the old people, and various other things, and when we had shoved it all into the car and were about to move off he unexpectedly said, “It is very important that your ego is declining, taking up less space, and then more space is left in your heart for God. On the whole it’s right that a person takes up less space with the years. Of course, I’m not talking about myself, because with the years I keep putting on weight.”

When we had unloaded everything and arranged it on the shelves in the store, Daniel said, “Do you really think you could leave? It is tantamount to deserting the battlefield at the critical moment.” “Do you really think right now is the critical moment?” I asked rather irritably, because the thought of leaving was stirring in my heart. “My dear girl, that is what a Christian has to choose, to always be at the critical moment, in the very heart of life, to experience pain and joy simultaneously. I love you very much. Have I really never told you that?”

At that moment I experienced what it was that he was talking about: a piercing pain in my heart, and a joy as strong as pain.

17. 1991, Berkeley

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WA

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ANUKYAN TO

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STHER

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ANTMAN

Dear Esther,

Now that you have gone, I am missing you even more. I wanted to talk to you about everything, but was embarrassed. In any case, you already know it all. My whole life I have been longing for a mother, both when I had none and when she reappeared. I never found contentment. It seems to me that my life has evolved in such a complicated way because I never had a mother beside me. You have become my mother more than Rita. Only with you have I formed a link which sustains me and makes me stronger and wiser.

Shortly after you left, Enrique moved into our house. You have seen him, one of those two friends Alex has been spending all his time with for the past year. Alex asked whether I would feel better if he and Enrique rented an apartment in town or lived at home. I said, at home. Now they come down together to breakfast, happy and handsome. It’s as if I have two sons. I smile and make coffee. Admittedly, only on Saturdays and Sundays—on working days I am out of the house before anybody else. Enrique is a great boy. He is helpful and friendly and there is absolutely no aggression in him. Although he is five years older than Alex they look the same age. They have the same physique and love exchanging clothes. Four years ago he left Mexico. He had problems with his parents. He mentioned it in passing and with a subtext which suggested he was praising me for being so tolerant. Enrique is finishing a design course and has already been invited to join some well-known firm. Alex is completely committed to sociology, but his interest is exclusively in the homosexual aspect.

Grisha gets on marvelously with them. Just as before, the house is full of openhearted laughter every time I come back from work and they are in the front room. I smile and ask if I may join them. I am exactly how my son and my husband want me to be: kindly and tolerant. Terribly tolerant. I allow everybody everything: my son to sleep with a boy, my husband to sleep with a girl. I am magnanimity itself. Everybody thinks I am wonderful. Grisha is attentive and gentle as never before. I do not say a word about Liza and he is very grateful. His embraces are as ardent as ever, and when I stopped going to university events he was simply delighted by my tact. I had ceded my place by his side at social events to Liza. There are still two university couples whom, as in the past, Grisha and I visit together.

We have an ambiguous and unarticulated but entirely consensual relationship. It seems only a matter of time before the three of us go out visiting together. Grisha would like nothing better, although he tries not to let on. I don’t, however, think that my tolerance will stretch that far. I can finally bring myself to tell you honestly that I have this terrible fear that he will leave me. I have consented to any form of relationship just as long as he stays with me. You may no longer respect me.

Anyway, that’s quite enough about that. We have talked about it plenty. Here’s some news! I was talking to Rita on the phone. She has a new and grandiose plan. Next year will be the fiftieth anniversary of the day she escaped from the Emsk ghetto. (Incidentally, two and a half months after that day I shall be 50!) They have decided to arrange a reunion in Emsk of those who are still alive, and my mother, imagine it, is also planning to go. It’s an insane idea but something she is perfectly capable of doing. In a wheelchair, by three modes of transport—from Haifa to Odessa by ship, from there by plane to Minsk, and from Minsk by train to Emsk. I was terribly cross at first and thought she should have the decency just to stay where she is! Then I suddenly realized this was another demonstration of her idiotically heroic character. She refuses to be daunted by any difficulties, least of all by her own disability. She is telling me that I have to come and collect her in Haifa and accompany her throughout the journey.

And yes, I do want to! I realize I want to see all this with my own eyes. It will be more powerful than a session on a psychoanalyst’s couch, not a Freudian peeping into the parental bed at the moment of your conception, but coming into living contact with the past of my family and people. Forgive the histrionics. Do tell me whether you have been invited to the reunion. Are you going? For some reason just the thought that you will be there makes the journey infinitely important to me.

Do you know what my life is like? It’s like living in a minefield. I avoid danger zones, don’t think about this, don’t talk about that, don’t mention something else. In fact, I try to think as little as possible! It’s only with you that I can talk without fear of disrupting the unstable equilibrium of my idiotic life.

Love,

Ewa

18. December 1991, Haifa

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ITA

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OWACZ TO

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AWEŁ

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OCI

SKI

Dear Paweł,

You and I have lived our entire lives side by side we had the same ideals the same goals the same friends but as it happened the Lord has been revealed to me at the end of my days and now I want just one thing to share my joy with all my friends. When a person takes one step toward God God immediately takes two toward them. Only one small gesture is needed to acknowledge that man can do nothing without God. When I think how much energy and strength and what heroism we showed for the purposes not of God but of man I feel great sorrow. I am not asking you to come to Haifa knowing how difficult it is for you to leave poor Mirka but I would like to suggest a little trip to Belorussia. The thing is I have had a letter from an old geezer I was with in the ghetto and from which we escaped together. Anyway they are organizing a reunion of all those who survived and that Jewish priest is coming who helped us to get arms for the escape. It will be interesting to take a look at him. I invite you to come to Emsk where we will meet no doubt for the last time.

Ewa will take me but my English friend Agnessa may come with me too. Not to Łód or Warsaw of course I shan’t go from there but you could if you wanted to. You are after all still on your feet.

Moreover Paweł I will not conceal that I very much want to share with you what I have gained. I regret that my encounter has occurred so late but while a person is alive it is never too late. I pray fervently that our meeting should take place mine with you and yours with the Lord. May God bless you and your dearest.

Your old friend Margarita (Rita) Kowacz

19. January 1992, Jerusalem

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ANTMAN

Dear Esther,

I didn’t even have time to phone you from home, it was all so urgent. I had a call on the morning of 5 January from Haifa to be told that Rita had died during the night. Grisha immediately took me to the airport. By a completely monstrous route, with two changes and an eight-hour wait in Frankfurt, I got to Haifa and my mother’s funeral took place the next day. Many things today surprised, touched, and even shocked me. It is night now, I am full of impressions and cannot sleep, and then there is the time change. So I have decided to write to you. My mother looked beautiful. At the end of her life she had earned that! The tense, suspicious expression so typical of her all through her life had changed to one of serenity and profound contentment.

Shortly before she died, she had had her hair cut. She had gray hair and a dense fringe at the front instead of that schoolmarmish bun she walked around with all her life. It sounds ridiculous, but it suited her very well.

The funeral service was conducted with great ceremony. The coffined body was taken to the Anglican Mission in Jerusalem, a place whose existence I had never suspected. Before the service, in a very austere hall in the Mission, a Jew wearing a skullcap and prayer shawl came in, a perfectly ordinary-looking Jew, and recited Jewish funeral prayers over the closed coffin. I was sitting on a bench with Agnessa next to me. I was going to ask what was going on but then thought better of it. Let everything take its course. Next a vicar came and conducted the funeral service.

We went out into the garden and I saw how beautiful it was. Lemon trees were in bloom as they are in Sicily at this time of year. Several fruit trees were bare, and one had pomegranates but not a single leaf. The whole orchard was green and there were shrubs which looked like juniper, cypresses, and palms. The sun was bright and cold and everything was very still and dazzling.

“Now we shall drive to the cemetery,” Agnessa said and took me to the railings. Beyond them I saw an intricately eroded cliff of stratified rock.

“We think this is the actual Golgotha, the place of a skull. Don’t you think it looks like it?” Agnessa smiled, revealing her long English teeth. I didn’t understand but then she explained, “It is an alternative Golgotha. You see, at the end of the last century they dug up a water cistern here and came upon the remains of an ancient garden. This garden is new, planted not long ago at all. When they found the cistern they suddenly saw Golgotha, too, although it had never been hiding. This cliff has always been there but nobody paid it any attention until they found a grave in a cave. It seems very likely that it is the grave which Joseph of Arimathea prepared for himself and his relatives.” As she spoke I saw that the rock face really did look like a human skull, with empty cave eye sockets and a sunken nose.

She took me down a side path to a small door set into the cliff. A window had been knocked through above it. Right beside the entrance lay a long stone with a rut hewn in it which looked like a rail. Slightly farther away was a round stone.

“This stone is from a different place, it is slightly smaller in size than the one which sealed the entrance to the cave. That one has disappeared in the course of 2,000 years. If the round stone sealing the entrance is placed on this stone rail, it is easy to move, it simply rolls. That was still difficult for the women. They called the gardener to help them. Go in and take a look.”

I went in as if in a dream. I have after all been to the official Church of the Sepulchre, and on more than one occasion. There I walked into a commotion in an enormous space where one church jostles another and everything is fenced off and chaotic, and there are crowds of old women in black and tourists and servers. The church above the sepulchre has a queue to get into the cave, the tourists are snapping away with their cameras, the tour guides are rattling on in every language, and the whole thing said nothing to my soul.

Here, however, there was nobody and I was suddenly certain that when I went in I would see the abandoned grave clothes. The cave was divided into two crypts, and in the farther one was a stone couch. Goose pimples ran up my arms and I felt that recurrent chill of mine.

Agnessa was standing outside. She smiled. “It does look very much like it, doesn’t it?” It did. Beneath a great fig tree two women in long skirts were sitting on a bench with their large hands folded in their laps. One took a piece of pitta bread out of her bag, broke it, and held out half to her neighbor who made the sign of the cross over her mouth and took a bite.

Four men carried my mother’s coffin to the bus and we drove to the Anglican cemetery. There were no flowers. I had had no time to buy any and the other mourners, fellow Anglicans, put whited stones at the head of the grave as is the Jewish custom.

After the funeral the vicar came over. Like Agnessa he had long teeth and pale eyes. I thought they were brother and sister but then realized they were husband and wife. He shook hands and gave me two forms. On one were written the words and music of a prayer, a stave with clusters of black notes. The second was a certificate about the holding of the funeral service.

Rita always kept documents and papers in perfect order, so now she can rest in peace. Esther, dear, something I never hoped for occurred. I was completely reconciled with her. Later I will have plenty of time to repent and feel guilty and hard-hearted, but today I am completely at peace with her.

I will fly home the day after tomorrow. All my love. Good night. It is already dawn here.

Yours,

Ewa

20. November 1991, Jerusalem

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UVIM

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AKHISH TO

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ANIEL

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TEIN

Dear Daniel,

I came a couple of times to see you at the monastery but they didn’t call you. The second time I left a note for you with my telephone number but you did not phone. Your monks are so surly that I am not convinced they passed the note on to you. Do you know that I have an extensive correspondence with those who survived in Czarna Puszcza? There are quite a few still around of those who emerged from the ghetto on 11 August 1942 and lived to see the liberation, but with every year that passes there are fewer and fewer. When I met David, who now lives in Ashkelon, we thought it would be a good idea to arrange a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the day you pulled that off. I correspond with Berl Kalmanovich in New York, Yakov Svirsky in Ohio, and a couple of other lads who were partisans.

There are very few Jews in Belorussia. I have heard there is nobody at all in Emsk, but the bones of our parents are there and of all our families. You know I have two sisters and nieces buried there. I will organize everything. You will understand that you are the main figure for us. You will sit at the head of the table and we will drink and recall all that happened.

Now, to business. Who have you met, who are you still in touch with of those who were partisans? Send me their addresses. David and I talked things over and decided people could bring their children, to show them the way we lived then. I think I shall go in advance this year to see whether there is at least a commemorative headstone. You were not from our locality and do not know what a grand Jewish cemetery there was in Emsk before the war. There were monuments of marble and granite. Has it survived? I doubt it. What the Germans did not wreck the Soviet regime will have destroyed. We will need to have a collection and erect a joint monument for all. Anyway, give me a call or write.

On behalf of the Association of Former Citizens of Emsk,

Ruvim Lakhish

21. 1984, Jerusalem

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YODOR

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RIVTSOV TO

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ATHER

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IKHAIL IN

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ISHKINO

Dear Father Mikhail,

I came to give my good wishes to Mother Ioanna on her name day and she gave me a letter from you. I was delighted. She told me to write a reply.

The Lord has brought me to the kind of place I prayed for. I have found a real elder. He lives in a cave like the Syrians did. What he eats I do not know. There is a spring for water but many a young person wouldn’t have the strength to crawl up the hill to it. He goes up there with a gourd, God knows how. He washes, fills the gourd with water, and heads back down the mountain like a lizard. There is no grass there, no goutwort, or anything else, only rocks. Whether a raven brings him food or an angel feeds him I do not know. He has been living in this cave since time immemorial, a Greek told me, about 100 years. I believe it. Or are they wrong? He reads while it’s light and when it’s dark he prays. He has no bed. There is a rock shaped like a couch and he sleeps on that. For a long time he would not allow me near or speak to me. One time I brought him a flat-bread and he would not come out. I left it by the entrance to his cave. The next day I came and it wasn’t there. Had it been eaten by wild animals? He is called Abun, but that is a word which means “Father” and nobody knows his real name. Beside his cave is a small landing, a stone like a table, and he places a book on that and kneels before the book. He reads Greek. When I climb up the cliff to him, my spirit soars and this trying, inhospitable place seems to me a paradise. Father Mikhail, if he accepts me, if he allows me to live somewhere nearby, I will leave this place 100 percent because as Elder Paisiy said on Athos, one percent holds me in the world and here truly there is no percent at all. I want to stay here forever, near Abun. I have visited Mother Ioanna, now I will go to the cliff and, if he accepts me, I will remain there.

With brotherly love,

Fyodor, Slave of God

22. 1988, Jerusalem

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OTHER

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OANNA TO

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ATHER

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IKHAIL IN

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ISHKINO

Dear Father Mikhail,

Greetings on this holy day! You probably thought it was time to include me in the bead-roll but here I am, still alive. I was entirely ready to die, had received extreme unction, taken communion, but my new lay Sister Nadya took me to the hospital. They put me on a table, cut me with knives and took out a tumor, a very large one, but benign. I will admit to you that I felt very well after the operation. Light, and my belly was empty. It was so good.

Before, I felt a great heaviness all the time. Well, I thought, everything is in God’s hands, including the doctors, but Nadya is from a new generation, a girl with higher education and a secular upbringing. Now she has such authority over me, she is insisting I must have my cataracts removed. Next week I shall be taken to Hadassah, a hospital here, to the eye department. First one eye, then the other.

I have on my tripod the unfinished “Akathist,” with a sheet draped over it. Nadya says, “There, the Lord wants you to finish it, Mother.” For three years I have seen only a window, but what is beyond the window I cannot see. I do not know, really. By the time you receive this letter I shall either have my sight back or will remain in darkness to the end.

My dear son, I sent you my blessing, but now I am sending it once more. At my age you have to expect the end at any moment. We had Mother Vissarioniya who completely lost her wits. For two years she was able to walk at least, but completely demented. That I really can do without! I value the light of reason more highly than the light outside the window. As Pushkin wrote, “God, do not let me lose my mind, far better beg or prisoner be, far better toil or hunger see.” But that’s nonsense, too. Toil is good and a joy in itself.

If the operation succeeds I shall write to you myself, because this, as you can see, has been written by someone else’s hand. Nadya’s. The Lord be with you. My blessing to Nina and to Yekaterina, Vera and Anastasia.

Ioanna

23. 1988

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OTHER

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IKHAIL IN

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ISHKINO

My dear friend Mishenka,

I am writing this myself! The scribble is barely legible for my hand has forgotten how to write, but my eyes can see and they say that later they will make spectacles and everything will really be fine. The doctor was Russian, a cheerful man. He praised my cataract and said it came away like a sweet wrapper. He has promised to do the second operation in two months’ time.

On Sunday I went into the church and everything was shining! So much light! Everything seemed to be golden, the iconostasis, the windows. Oh, dear, how sad it was living without the sun!

How glad I am, my son, that you have an addition to your family. I know men want sons and are not too pleased when they get daughters. Well, your patience has been rewarded, you have a boy in your home. Thanks be to God! You didn’t write what name you have given him. Did you forget? Or do you want me to guess? Is it really Seraphim? In the past children were often named in honor of St. Seraphim of Sarov, but now that seems to be out of fashion. I have no time to write, the bell is ringing to call me to the liturgy.

The Lord be with you,

Ioanna

24. 1 August 1992, Jerusalem

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Congratulations, Mikhail. I received both your letter and the Church Herald. Twenty-five years in the priesthood is not to be sneezed at! Send me a photograph of how you were feted. Did His Holiness really come to you in Tishkino himself? Oh, fear and trembling! As they say, accept praise and calumny with equanimity! Misha, how everything has changed! Who would have thought it! The accursed regime has ended and you are having church awards pinned to your breast! We have read here that the new government is fraternizing with the Church, but I am mistrustful. I have never in my life had any love of authorities. But do not listen to me, I am an old woman. Now it is time for me to boast: I, too, have been feted. Who remembered I do not know, I myself had forgotten, but I, too, have had a round anniversary. I am 90 years old. And what did I start remembering? My birthdays, as I recall them. I remember particularly well when I was nine.

That year we didn’t go to our estate at Gridnevo for the summer because mother had had a difficult time giving birth to my brother, Volodya. She had an operation which she barely survived, and was ill, and our departure was constantly postponed. We went after my Angel Day on 11 July. I remember all the guests. There were not many because everybody had left town, and I was afraid there would not be many presents. We were not spoiled, but that year Mama gave me a French doll with eyes which closed, with locks of hair and wearing a sailor’s costume, with leather boots with a button. We were enjoying the last years of happiness before the war began. Papa was an admiral. You probably did not know that. There, I’m giving way to singing an old woman’s songs, there’s no one to stop me.

Apart from sending greetings, what I wanted to write to you about is your pal Fyodor Krivtsov. He finally found himself an elder and disappeared. There are lucky people like that who are constantly looking for someone to give themselves to. He found some kind of desert dweller, and to this day there are any number of them here of every description: some who fast, some who live up a pillar, healers and miracle workers. Hordes of charlatans and lunatics. A saint is a quiet being, unnoticeable, who sleeps beneath the stairs and dresses inconspicuously. You have to have keen eyes to spot one. But enough. Fyodor came yesterday. In Jerusalem we’ve seen it all before. When I had just arrived here I walked through the Old Town and saw lepers, and people possessed, and dressed in every conceivable way. But Fyodor came and surprised me. He was in a filthy shirt, thin as a rake, his eyes blazing with a mad ardor. He looked above everybody’s heads, his beard down to his belt, his head covered in sores. At least he was wearing a skullcap.

His elder has gone to his rest! Fyodor needed a priest for the funeral rites. I know our Kirill. There’s no way he will drag himself up a mountain, he is stout and gets out of breath. The second, Nicodemus, is sprightly, wiry, and might make it, but he is not here, he’s on Mount Sinai.

I told him to go to the Greeks, they have plenty of priests, but he shook his head. No, the elder was at loggerheads with the Greeks. I told him to go to the Syrians, the Copts. Again he shook his head, they had already refused. At that I thought of Brother Daniel.

There is, I said, a Carmelite monk who never refuses anyone, only he probably won’t suit you. Off poor Fyodor went. Yes, in parting he said that his elder, Abun, was the Bishop of the True Church of Christ, its Patriarch. Is that a large Church, I asked? It used to have three members, Abun, the one before Abun, his teacher, and Fyodor, but now there is only Fyodor left. The rest of us, it seems, are not true. Have you heard of that Church, Misha? I sent him with my blessing to Daniel in Haifa. He will not refuse, I’m sure. He would as lief conduct the rites for a vagabond as for a patriarch. He is one of our inconspicuous people and has lived all his life somewhere under the stairs. I’m talking too much.

The Lord be with you, my dear friend Mishenka.

25. 1992, Jerusalem

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ELEGRAM FROM

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ADEZHDA

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RIVOSHEINA TO

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ATHER

M

IKHAIL IN

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ISHKINO

ON 2 AUGUST MOTHER IOANNA SUMAROKOVA DIED IN THE 91ST YEAR OF HER AGE. NADEZHDA KRIVOSHEINA.

26. January 1992, Jerusalem

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UVIM

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AKHISH TO ALL PARTICIPANTS

Dear …….,

The Organizing Committee of the Reunion of Inhabitants of the Emsk Ghetto wishes to report:

1. The Reunion will take place on 9 August this year in the town of Emsk. Agreement has been reached with the town council. In view of the fact that the two hotels in the town (Sunrise and October) can accommodate no more than 60 guests and as of now our list of participants has 82 names (may they all continue in good health!), the council is putting the hostel of the Technical Teacher Training College at our disposal, which can accommodate up to 120.

2. Representatives of international Jewish organizations and of the governments of Russia, Belorussia, Poland, and Germany have been invited to participate in the Reunion. A number have already replied. It is confirmed that German journalists with film crews will attend. Permission to film has not yet been received, but I have already written to the relevant organizations.

3. In reply to an enquiry addressed to the Emsk town council regarding the erection of a memorial to Jews who died in the ghetto, I have been informed that there is already a monument in the town to Soviet soldiers who died during the liberation of Belorussia and that they have no need of another one. It would seem, however, that a monument could be erected in the old Jewish cemetery, which has apparently survived. The money we have collected will be used for that purpose.

4. The municipal authorities will accord us a speech by the current chairman of the town council and an amateur concert.

5. I shall pass on information from time to time in respect of tickets, visas, and transportation but everybody is welcome to write to me with any questions.

Ruvim Lakhish

27. 4 August 1992, Haifa

F

ROM

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ILDA’S DIARY

We left at four in the morning and after driving for two hours on an empty road rapidly reached the turning for Qumran. The whole journey Daniel was telling me about some new fragment of the Dead Sea scrolls which has just been published. Apparently the archaeologist who discovered this marvel told him about it himself. In Cave No. 4 they discovered a new manuscript from, one hesitates to say it out loud, the first century BC in which the author, writing in the first person, calls himself the Messiah and states that he has endured suffering and sorrow but now has been raised above the angels and is seated on the heavenly throne and closer than all the angels to the Almighty. From the text, one might imagine that it is a letter from the next world for fellow thinkers left behind.

“It occurs to me,” Daniel said, “that today we shall see one of those who has been raised higher than the angels.” I laughed, but then realized he was not joking at all. He told me entirely seriously that he had long ago heard of this elder and all kinds of miracles he performed before suddenly stopping.

At this point we saw a tall figure on the road. At first I thought it was a Bedouin. He was wound around in rags, but then I saw a skullcap on his head. So this was Fyodor. We parked the car and got out. He bowed. Daniel held out his hand to him but he shied away.

“Are you a priest?” he asked.

Daniel said to him, “Have no doubt about that, Brother, for more than 30 years. Do you not believe me?”

He opened his briefcase and took out his monk’s scapular.

“Now do you believe me? I also have a cross, though not as large as yours,” he said smiling. Fyodor did not smile back. He was wearing an extremely large wooden pectoral cross.

We walked through the gates of the park, turned left through the old cemetery, and began climbing the mountain. We left the famous Qumran caves behind us to our right and walked for quite a long time to the end of the path. Fyodor told us we would now need to keep close behind him, put our feet were he did, and hold on with our hands to the ledges he would cling to.

It was nothing short of rock climbing. Some rocks crumbled beneath our feet while others were firm. He knew them all and it was clear he often climbed up here. We dragged ourselves to a small flat area situated not on the summit but slightly to one side and in the shade, at least in the morning. During the day everything here was a sun trap. There was a narrow crevice into the cave. Daniel could barely squeeze through. I wanted to look in but Fyodor would not allow it. I saw only that an oil lamp was burning in there.

Daniel and Fyodor agreed on how they would conduct the funeral service, who would recite what. Fyodor asked Daniel to conduct the liturgy over the dead body as if over the relics of a saint. Daniel nodded. He put on his cross and prayed. He went into the cave with Fyodor behind him. There was no room for me so I stood outside. If chanting was needed I would join in, if it was something I knew.

The view was barren but it took your breath away. The Dead Sea gleamed below like mercury. Jordan was invisible behind the haze. How could anyone have lived here in isolation for so many years? Eighty, according to Fyodor, but that was impossible. Fyodor asked Daniel to conduct the service in Arabic. He had celebrated it together with Brother Roman many times but had asked me to bring the text. I passed it to him in the cave and looked in. On the bare rock lay a mummy wrapped from head to foot in a white sheet. A lamp was burning on the rock and Daniel was kneeling before the rock because it was impossible to stand up, even for him. Fyodor was to one side bent double. I could only have crawled in on all fours. Daniel told me to read the Gospel according to Matthew. I stood outside and began quietly.

I suddenly felt a chill the like of which I have never before experienced. It was almost noon, the heat was 40 degrees, but my teeth were chattering. I suddenly felt so ill, and I could tell that Daniel, too, was unwell. I had a water bottle with me and wanted to pass it to him, but Fyodor would not turn around. I took a mouthful, in that kind of temperature you need to keep drinking. I tried again to pass Daniel the bottle but Fyodor would not take it. There on the ledge the sun was beating down as if a fire were blazing nearby, but the sense of chill really did not pass.

I began reading again, finished Matthew and started on Mark. From the cave I heard Arab prayers and Church Slavonic reading. I read as if unconscious, but in fact I was fully conscious only in some abominable state. Something happened to time. It no longer extended but was rolled into a ball and hung immobile around me. Then it was all over. First Fyodor emerged and then Daniel behind him. I noticed there was a pile of rocks by the entrance to the cave and Fyodor began heaping them up until the cave became a tomb. Daniel and I were going to help but he shook his head. We waited for him to block it then made our way down. It was even more difficult going down than climbing up. I didn’t remember the way well and would never have found it by myself.

We went back to the car and Daniel invited Fyodor to come with us but he said he had to go back. As we drove away we saw him running full pelt toward the hill. We drove some 40 kilometers in silence before I finally asked, “What was that all about?”

Daniel said, “I don’t know, but the cave was seething with snakes. Or did I imagine it?”

28. July 1992, Berkeley

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ANUKYAN TO

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STHER

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ANTMAN

Dear Esther,

Amazingly enough everything works out splendidly. I fly to Boston on Friday evening, we can spend Saturday together and I will help you pack. On Sunday morning we fly to Frankfurt and change for Minsk. We have a three-hour wait for the flight, but that is not only the most straightforward but the only option. There are two planes from Frankfurt to Minsk each week, and any other route would involve two transfers.

In Minsk we spend the night in a hotel, and in the morning go by special bus to Emsk. I swear no geographical point on earth has evoked so much emotion as this godforsaken town of Emsk. Unfortunately, Paweł Kociski will not be able to come. His wife is very ill and he has not been able to leave her alone for the last two years. Rita always condemned him for his predilection for the female sex. It seems he really did have endless romances on the side, but now when Mirka is so ill he is behaving impeccably. It is a pity I shan’t be able to introduce you. Please do not worry and think that you will be the oldest person at the reunion. The organizers have sent me a list and there are some grounds to think you will be one of the younger ones. One Jew was born in 1899. Work it out!

Lots of love. I won’t write to you again. See you soon.

29. September 1992, Haifa

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ALL NEWSPAPER IN THE PARISH HOUSE

RUVIM LAKHISH’S REPORT ON THE TRIP

The trip to Emsk on 9 August 1992 was made by 44 survivors who nowadays live in nine different countries. In 1942, precisely 50 years ago, they escaped from the Emsk ghetto. Of the 300 who escaped at that time, 124 survived until the end of the war. Many have since died.

Nevertheless, 44 survivors came to Emsk to mark this event and we all give thanks to the Lord that he saved our lives and grieve for those who died in dreadful agony at the hands of the Fascists. Among us was the man to whom we owe our lives. He organized the escape at the risk of his own life. That is our brother, Daniel Stein, who is now a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.

We arrived in Emsk at noon on 9 August and immediately walked around the town. The castle is still half ruined, as it was when we were moved there at the end of 1941. Local townspeople came out, but there are very few left who remember those events. Young people, we found, know nothing about what happened here 50 years ago.

One meeting did touch us very deeply. Among the visitors was Esther Gantman from America. Before the war she worked in Emsk as a dentist and, after the escape, in a partisan unit helping her husband, Isaak, perform surgery. Isaak has died, may he rest in peace. An old man, a local Belorussian, came over to Esther and asked whether she remembered him. It turned out that since before the war he has been wearing teeth which she made for him. Three of his front teeth had been knocked out in a fight, and she made such good replacements that, although all his other teeth have since fallen out, he still has those three.

Everybody was very sad. Some had their parents and relatives killed here, all lost friends and neighbors. The inhabitants of the ghetto were shot not in the castle but in a ravine two kilometers from the town. We went there. Workers were already erecting the stone we had brought. It is not a satisfactory site, being overgrown with weeds. We did not, however, feel we could erect a memorial in Emsk Castle because, in the first place, there are none of our people buried there, and in the second place the authorities may need the castle in the future and throw our stone out. At least nobody is going to build over a ravine.

In the evening our main hero, Daniel Stein, arrived. He flew via Moscow and arrived by train. German journalists and film crews arrived, too. They swarmed around Daniel and his assistant, a German woman, and sat till late evening in the foyer of the hotel asking him questions.

The following day, 10 August, a public meeting was organized in Lenin Square at which Rymkevich, the chairman of the town council, and a partisan hero Savva Nikolaichik made speeches.

From Rymkevich’s speech we derived the same pleasure as we used to from reading Soviet newspapers. It was an antidote to any possible nostalgia for socialism, although there was among our number Leib Rafalsky from Tel Aviv who no longer loves Stalin but still loves Lenin and Karl Marx. Then Savva spoke. I remember him from Czarna Puszcza. He was the head of a brigade further to the west but our people were in contact with him. He is a very good man. He later fought at the front and lost an arm, but at that time he had both arms. More to the point, he had a good head on his shoulders.

Then I spoke, Ruvim Lakhish, a citizen of Israel, and thanked the town council and local people for having preserved half the Jewish cemetery and having built a very fine sports stadium on the other half. When the speeches were over, we laid flowers at the monument to the Heroic Liberators of Belorussia and the Town of Emsk from the German Fascist Usurpers.

There was then an amateur concert in the square in which a group of schoolchildren performed Belorussian folk songs and dances, and the musicians from the Minsk Philharmonia performed arias from the operas of Verdi. Some actors read poetry by Pushkin and Lermontov, and the war poets Konstantin Simonov and Mikhail Isakovsky. A folk music troupe from the House of Culture performed folk songs, also very well.

One of our members, Noel Shatz, sang “Lomir ale ineynem” and “Tum balalaika,” and everybody joined in.

In the local restaurant, which is called Waves, tables were set and everybody was very touched because there are no potatoes growing in Israel or Canada as delicious as those which grow in Belorussia.

The next day was the main event, the erecting of the memorial. There was an unveiling. The names of those who died was read out loud, more than 500 people. That was also a major task, compiling that list, making sure nobody had been forgotten

I said a few words and a local woman, Elizaveta Kutikova, spoke. Throughout the war she sheltered Raya Ravikovich and her little daughter Vera and saved both their lives. Vera is a grandmother now herself. They met like family. Raya died last year in Israel. Everybody cried of course. In the Yad Vashem Museum to the memory of the slain in Jerusalem, trees have been planted in honor of righteous people who saved Jews. Each one has a tree, but in Yad Vashem there is no tree in honor of Elizaveta. Raya, of course, is to blame for that. She did send Elizaveta money, but she was not given the honor she deserved. How that happened I do not know, but here was one more righteous person. Of course, when we get home we will put that right and invite Elizaveta over, and plant the tree, welcome her as she deserves and show her everything. Everybody who saved Jews during the war is respected as a righteous person, but she had been forgotten.

Rymkevich this time sent a deputy in his stead, a pretty woman, and she, too, spoke. At the end our Rabbi Chaim Zusmanovich came forward. He is the son of Berl Zusmanovich who also escaped from the ghetto but did not live to see this day, having died in 1985. Chaim was born in Israel in 1952. First he gave a speech and then he read the Kaddish.

There was one more event, a service at the Catholic Church, but I did not attend it. That is one place I would not go.

How can I describe the feeling of sorrow and gratitude. Six million people were killed—what a tragedy. The European Jewry who spoke Yiddish no longer exist. Our children speak Hebrew, other Jews speak English or Russian or all sorts of different languages. Of the 5,000 Jews who lived in Emsk before the war, only one Jewish woman remains. I will not speak on her behalf, she will tell her own story.

Our gratitude is to fate, or God, or I don’t know how best to put it, that we 44 are still alive and have had many children and grandchildren. I calculate that the posterity of those who survived Emsk, who came out from the ghetto, is more than 400 souls. There is one other person to whom we are all grateful: Daniel Stein. Our thanks to him for leading us forth, like Moses.

August 1992

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PEECH BY

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AV

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HAIM

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USMANOVICH

Do you know that today is the day of deepest mourning for Jews, the ninth of Av? Our day of grief has inexplicably fallen on the ninth of Av. This is the day we broke out of the ghetto and a day when hundreds of our relatives and friends died here. It is a day of fasting and on this day we eat and drink nothing and do not put on leather footwear. The fasting begins on the evening of the eighth of Av, a few minutes before the setting of the sun, and ends after the appearance of stars in the sky in the evening of the ninth.

Originally the fast of the ninth of Av was associated with the “sin of the scouts,” when Moses had brought the Jews to the borders of the Promised Land. They were afraid to enter it immediately and asked Moses to send scouts so that they could come back and describe what kind of country lay before them. Although this request in itself revealed a doubting by the people of the Word of God, Moses nevertheless agreed to send people to reconnoiter. The scouts who returned 40 days later reported that “the cities are walled, and very great” and populated with giants against whom the Jews were “as grasshoppers.” Two of the scouts said that the Promised Land was beautiful, but they were not believed. All night from the eighth to the ninth of Av the Jews wept, saying that God had brought them to this land to destroy them and that they would rather die in the wilderness. Then God was angered and said that this time the Jews’ tears had been wasted, but now they would have many causes for lamentation on this night. Such would be their punishment for the sin of unbelief.

The first punishment was that the generation which came out of Egypt was not destined to enter the Holy Land. For forty years they wandered in the wilderness, one year for every day spent by the scouts, and they died in the wilderness as they had asked to in their moment of cowardice. Only their children were able to enter the Promised Land.

The second punishment, for the Jews having been frightened of the people inhabiting Canaan and refusing to go into Israel at the time ordained by God, was that now they faced years of terrible wars for that land although, if they had obeyed the Lord, they would miraculously have been granted it without effort.

Even after entering the Promised Land the Jews continued to sin. They still did not believe in the One Being. They needed images and idols, material things.

The prophet Jeremiah, a witness of the destruction of the First Temple, said that people had made even the Temple itself into an object of worship. People thought it was the Temple that protected them and not God, and that the Temple would redeem any crime they might commit. It was for this reason that the Temple was destroyed as God removed that temptation.

God expects faith from the Jews, and until the Jews repent of their sin of unbelief, this punishment will be with them, and they will have ever new cause for lamentation on this day.

Here is a list of the sorrowful events which have occurred over the centuries on the ninth of Av:

On 9 Av in 2449 from the Creation of the World (1313 BCE) the Almighty passed judgment that the generation coming out of Egypt was doomed to wander in the wilderness for 40 years and to die without seeing the land of Israel.

On 9 Av in 3338 from the Creation of the world (422 BCE) the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed and burned the First Temple built by Solomon in the 10th century BC.

On 9 Av in 3828 from the Creation of the World (68 BCE) the Roman warlord (subsequently Emperor) Titus Vespasian destroyed the Second Temple, built in the 4th century BC.

On 9 Av in 135 CE the last bastion of the Jewish rebels fell and the leader of the rebellion, Shimon bar Kokhba, was killed. According to the Roman historian Cassius Dionus, in the battles of that war, 580,000 Jews perished, and 50 fortified cities and 985 settlements were destroyed. Almost all of Judaea was turned into a scorched wilderness.

On 9 Av a few years after the defeat of bar Kokhba, the Roman ruler Turnus Rufus ploughed over the territory of the Temple and its surroundings. The prophecy was fulfilled that, “Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.” The occupiers forbade Jews to live in Jerusalem. Anybody violating the ban faced the death penalty. Jerusalem became a pagan city under the name of Aelia Capitolina.

On 9 Av in 1095 Pope Urban II announced the start of the first crusade, as a result of which the warriors of Jesus killed tens of thousands of Jews and destroyed numerous Jewish communities.

On 9 Av in 1290 mass expulsion of Jews from England began, and on 9 Av 1306 the same began in France.

On 9 Av in 1348 European Jews were accused of organizing one of the most widespread epidemics of plague (the Black Death) in history. This accusation led to a brutal wave of pogroms and killings.

On 9 Av in 1492 King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castille published a decree expelling the Jews from Spain.

On 9 Av in 1555 areas where the Jews of Rome lived were enclosed by walls and turned into a ghetto, and two years later, also on 9 Av, Jews from the rest of Italy were moved into the ghetto.

On 9 Av in 1648 there was a massacre of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Bessarabia organized by Bogdan Khmelnitsky and his accomplices.

On 9 Av in 1882 pogroms of Jewish communities began in Russia within the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement.

On 9 Av in 1914 the First World War began.

On 9 Av in 1942 deportation of the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto began, and on the same day the death camp in Treblinka began operating; and that same day 500 of our nearest and dearest were shot in Emsk; But on that day 300 people were led forth from the ghetto and saved.

9 Av is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar but, despite that, Jews believe that it will one day become our greatest festival. When all Jews repent of their sins and turn to God, on that day the Messiah will be born.

INTERVIEW WITH LEJA SZPILMAN

“Tell me, please, Leja Pejsachowna, how has it come about that you are now the only Jewish woman living in Emsk?”

“After the war several dozen Jews left. They were all penniless. They had nothing left, no houses, no property. Some of it had been burned and some confiscated. We had Jews living not only in the town, many lived on farmsteads or small farms. Almost all of those were killed. My brother and his family were shot in 1942. The town Jews were mainly in the ghetto, but I did not go into the ghetto. Before the revolution, we had a servant called Nastya, and her daughter Sima was like me. We were very friendly from when we were children. When the war began, the Germans immediately came and Nastya took me to stay with her in the countryside. I was eleven. Nastya cut my hair off and told me to wear a headscarf, to keep my head covered, because my hair was so Jewish, but if it was close cropped it wasn’t obvious. At that time many children had their hair cropped because of lice. We didn’t have paraffin to rub on.”

“How is it that you are today the only Jewish woman?”

“I’m telling you, at first there were several dozen. Mama’s cousin came back and wanted to take me away, but I did not want to leave Nastya and Sima. I was crazy, afraid of everybody. I don’t think I was entirely right in the head. Perhaps I’m still not.

“That’s what my daughter says, ‘Mama has a screw loose.’ Then Nastya’s son Tolya came back from the front, an invalid, of course. I married him but he soon died. I brought my daughter up. In 1970 she emigrated to America. Everybody went off to different places, some west, some east, some north, some south. At first a lot emigrated from Belorussia to Russia. One, an engineer, went to a construction site in Norilsk. People went to Israel and America, too, of course. My daughter went to study in Minsk, met a Jewish boy, they decided to emigrate together, but Sima and I live here. My daughter keeps inviting us to come and see her but what for? We have everything here, our house, our vegetable garden. Sima never got married, she is a spinster. Nastya we buried long ago. My graves are here, all of them, Mama, Papa, my eight brothers and sisters, grandmothers, grandfathers, all murdered on the same day. That’s how I come to be on my own now.”

“Leja Pejsachowna, why do you not want to emigrate and stay with your daughter?”

“There’s no way I will do that. How could I emigrate to that America of theirs, what use is it to me? If Lilia likes it let her live there, but I don’t like anything about it. Last time she brought me a suit, but I’ve never once worn it. It’s got such a collar and it’s green! And such soft shoes that your feet slip around in them. Well, I’m just saying that, I’m joking of course. Here are all my graves, I go there every day, tidy them, keep them clean. We have our own house, and Nastya re-registered it to the two of us. Sima has attacks, how could I leave?”

“Leja Pejsachowna, have you ever been to visit your daughter in America? What town does she live in?”

“I have never been there. It’s too far to travel. If it was nearer I would go but judge for yourself, I have never in my life been even to Minsk. I’ve never traveled further than Grodno, and to go to America you have to change so many times! It’s so difficult with luggage. No, don’t ask me, nothing would make me go. If she misses me she can come and visit me herself. Her town is called, like our places here, Ostin, the place of bones. It’s in Texas.”

“Leja Pejsachowna, you go to the graves but do you know who is buried where? After all, we’ve been told 500 people were shot here.”

“What, do you think I go to the ravine? Not for anything! No, you don’t understand. I don’t go anywhere near there. I only go to the old Jewish cemetery, to the part that’s still there. Of course, many of the graves have been broken, but I clean the paths, and keep clean the railings where they have them, pull out the weeds. You see, our town was not backward. We had a lot of scholars and rabbis. There was a yeshiva here. My grandfather’s brother was educated, too. Those are the graves I tend. I don’t remember much of the Jewish language, very little now, but I know all the letters, I can make out the names and I know who lies where. The numbers, of course, I can’t translate, what year it is by our reckoning.”

“Do you have any trouble with your compatriots?”

“How could I? They’re all my people here, some in the ground, some walking around in the street. They treat me well, although I am Jewish. They never say anything bad, you know. Of course I’m glad our people have come but none of my friends or relatives among them. All the people I know are here. The dead and the living. Come home with me, I’ll introduce you to Sima. She is more than a sister to me.”

“How do you get by in material terms?”

“Very well. We have two pensions, a vegetable garden, chickens, and so much clothing that we can’t wear it out fast enough. That whole part of our street wears our clothes. We had a goat before, but don’t keep one now.”

“We were told that here in Belorussia many of the local inhabitants collaborated with the Germans during the war, betraying Jews. What you think of that?”

“People vary. Some helped against the Jews, of course, but others didn’t. They don’t like them, the Jews. Us, that is. But Nastya saved me. She had a sister Nyura, and she kept coming to her all through the war and saying, ‘I’ll denounce you, I’ll denounce your Yid.’ Nastya just said to her, ‘Go and do it, go on! They’ll kill me and Sima, and arrest you at the same time. And I’ll tell them your husband joined the Red Army.’ She would give Nyura some food or some clothing and away she would go. Life was always hard for people in Belorussia, especially during the war.

“People who betrayed a Jew were given 20 German Marks and clothing taken from the person. Our neighbor Mikhei betrayed the taylor Nuchman to get a good sheepskin jacket. They looked for Poles as well, but less.

“I wish more people were good and that there were no wars, that’s what I have to say to you. Good-bye.”

DANIEL STEIN’S ACCOUNT OF THE CHURCH SERVICE IN EMSK

No church service was planned. All the former captives of the ghetto were Jews to whom Christianity is entirely alien. First there was a memorial service, the Kaddish was celebrated beside the stone we erected at the place where our brothers and sisters are buried. Then we went all together into the town. I wanted to show my Christian brothers from Germany the Catholic Church. A stone wall surrounded it but the gate was open. We went in. The church was a building site, covered in scaffolding, and the courtyard was strewn with building materials. Perestroika was going on here, too. Women were sitting on stone slabs and they said they were waiting for the priest because the service was to take place at 5:00 pm. I wanted to go in and perhaps assist, but the verger came out to me and said there would be no service. The priest had phoned to say he was ill and could not come.

I told him the last time I was in the church was during the war. I had survived and become a Catholic priest and would like to conduct the service. He unlocked the church and we all went in. Inside, the church was also covered in scaffolding, but it was possible to have a service in a side chapel. I put on the stole. I began the Mass with the reading for the day from the Prophet Nahum. I must quote this text, because you couldn’t have found more appropriate words for that day:

“Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy vows; for the wicked shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off. For the Lord bringeth again the excellency of Jacob, as the excellency of Israel: for the emptiers have emptied them out, and marred their vine branches. Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not; The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots. The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses.”

I finished the Mass and then preached a sermon. Hilda recorded it on a tape recorder. Here it is:

“Brothers and sisters! Fifty years ago I sat for a long time here in a pew during confession and was afraid that the priest would recognize me as a non-Catholic. Circumstances developed in a way which meant that I had to flee the town, but later I returned and nuns took me in. They hid me for fifteen months. A few days after they admitted me, I was baptized.

“Today I would like to thank the Lord for three things: for the saving of those people who came at that time out of the ghetto, and for saving me also, for the fifty years of my Christian faith and the thirty years of my work in the country where Jesus was born and performed his service, in Galilee, for he was a Galilean and spoke the Hebrew language. Today we once more have a Jewish Church in Israel.

“I did not specially choose the texts for today’s reading. If you were listening carefully, it was a description of what occurred here in August 1942.

“Today we have come from the land of Israel to remember the dead. Their blood, shed here, served the arising of new life, as it is said in the reading: ‘For the Lord bringeth again the excellency of Jacob, as the excellency of Israel.’

“Here, between two churches, in November 1941, before I came to Emsk, fifteen hundred Jews were murdered. Their blood is here. In August 1942 not far from this place in a ravine a further five hundred Jews were shot, old men and children who had not the strength to flee the ghetto.

“Here, too, was shed the blood of our brothers, Poles and Belorussians, Russians and Germans. In my heart I always pray by name for those who were kind to me personally, the Poles Walewicz, the German Reinhold, and the Belorussians Harkevich and Lebeda.

“I would like to thank all of you, because the nuns who hid me were also members of your community. The Lord will reward you for what you did for me and my fellow citizens.”

Then Hilda sang in a delicate voice the words of the Patriarch Jacob which he spoke in Beit El, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.” Then there was the concluding prayer:

“Fortified by your food, O Lord, we ask that your servants our brothers and sisters who left the world in agony in this town, freed of all guilt, should rise together with all of us to eternal life. Amen.”

Then we came out of the church and an old lady who was weeping bitterly came over to me. I remember old Belorussian ladies like this very well, wearing a headscarf, felt boots even in the middle of summer, with a staff and a sack. She pressed a large green apple on me and said “Father, accept our poisoned apple …”

She put the apple in my hand, knelt down, and said, “Ask your God to forgive us and no longer be angry with us. For those innocent Jews who were killed he has sent his wormwood star upon us.”

At first I did not understand, but a German journalist explained that among the people, the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station was being linked to an apocalyptic utterance about a wormwood star which would fall to earth and poison it.

“Don’t cry, grandmother,” I said. “God does not bear grudges against his children.”

She reached for my hand holding the apple. It is the custom in Orthodoxy for the people to kiss the priest’s hand. I offered her the apple to kiss and she went away as she had come, very tearful.

No, I really cannot accept the idea that God punishes peoples. Neither the Jews, the Belorussians, or any others. It is impossible.

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN BY HILDA ENGEL

Captions

1. This is what Emsk Castle looks like 50 years after the ghetto was housed within its walls. On the right are the two buses in which we came from Minsk.

2. The memorial stone erected by those who escaped from the ghetto in memory of those who were unable to leave.

3. A group of reunion participants.

4. The meeting in Emsk town square. Speech by Mayor Rymkevich.

5. Amateur performance. Children’s choir, dance company, folk music band.

6. Kaddish. In the center is Rabbi Chaim Zusmanovich.

7. Leja Szpilman, the only Jewish person in the city of Emsk, with her adopted sister Serafima Lapina.

8. The square where mass extermination of the Jews took place in November 1941 (1,500 people, and there is no list of the names). To the right, the Catholic Church behind wooden scaffolding; to the left, the Russian Orthodox Church.

9. Ruvim Lakhish, organizer of the reunion.

10. Brother Daniel and Ewa Manukyan, born in winter 1942 in Czarna Puszcza. Her mother, Rita Kowacz, escaped from the ghetto with others on 10 August, but a few months later left with her children to fight the Fascists in the Armia Ludowa.

11. Esther Gantman, widow of Isaak Gantman, the doctor who operated on all who lived in the forests and on the partisans. She, too, was a doctor and assisted her husband during operations.

12. Other young people, born after the war to those who escaped from the ghetto. Their children and grandchildren. (These photographs have been provided by reunion participants.)

30. August 1992

F

ROM A CONVERSATION ON THE FLIGHT FROM

F

RANKFURT TO

B

OSTON BETWEEN

E

WA

M

ANUKYAN AND

E

STHER

G

ANTMAN

“Ewa. Isn’t it extraordinary, Daniel had no knowledge of my existence. He did not know my mother or even that there was a pregnant woman among those who escaped from the ghetto. I told him everything I knew, and added what I did not know but had been told by Naphtali, a cheery old man from Israel who helped my mother and remembers my brother Witek. He was amazed I had survived, as you were when you heard the tale.

“While I was telling Daniel my story, he said nothing, but from time to time put his hand on my head, stroked my hair, and sighed, ‘My dear daughter …’ It was very important to him that I had adopted Catholicism. I told him that since I was young I have only glanced into the church and lit candles, but do not take communion. I told him I was at loggerheads with my mother throughout my life and was only fully reconciled after her death. He asked whether my father was alive and I said he was one of those who refused to leave the ghetto. He was an electrician and believed he would survive because of his profession. Daniel remembered him immediately. Bauch! I tried questioning him, but he said only that he had seen my father several times, the last time being the morning he, Daniel, was arrested. Daniel supposed Bauch had been shot along with all the others. I had a moment of meaningless grief, hearing about the death of a father who to all intents and purposes never existed for me.

“When I had seen you to the hotel, I went to the Catholic Church with him. He conducted the service very quickly and passionately, partly in Polish, partly in Hebrew and, I thought, very beautifully. Then he was surrounded and tugged at by people for a long time, but held me by the hand like a child and did not let go. Afterward we sat in the church on the very pew where he sat fifty years earlier and he asked me why my eyes were so sad. I would hardly have burdened him with such frank admissions if he hadn’t asked. I told him how tormenting I found the situation with Alex. I cannot accept his sexual choice. Daniel was at a loss, then said something amazing, ‘My child, I really cannot understand this! Women are so beautiful, so attractive. It is quite incomprehensible to me how anyone can turn away from this beauty and take a man instead of a woman. Poor boy!’

“That is what he said. Not one of the psychologists ever said anything like that. They tried to conduct an analysis, to deduce something and in some way link Alex’s sexuality with my family life, with some kind of problems of my own. Daniel said that, like me, he was quietly horrified when faced with this vice, and he had encountered homosexuals on more than one occasion. He said it would be better if Alex lived away from home, not involving me in his mutual relations because I should protect myself. In just the same way he asked about and was upset when he heard of my difficulties with Grisha. He closed his eyes and was silent for a long time. He said we never know what further trials may be ahead of us, illness and problems, and it would be good if I could learn to rejoice in things not associated with my family and my relationships with other people. It would be better if I directed my attention elsewhere, to trees, the sea, all the beauty that surrounds us, and then all the destroyed connections would be restored and I would be able to go to church and receive help from the Source which is always waiting for us.

“I should think less about my emotions and altogether less about myself, and be prepared for serious trials. He would like me to come some time to see him in Israel. He promised to show me all the things he knows and loves. He said I should write to him, but he would either not reply at all or only very briefly. He said he would always pray for me and told me that I should also pray, imagining that I held in my hands all the people I love and was lifting them up to the Lord. That would do it.

“I told him I had lost my faith when I was a teenager and now have no idea whether I am a Catholic. He gave me such a friendly smile, passed his hand over my hair, and said, ‘My child, do you really think God only loves Catholics? Do what your heart bids you, be compassionate, and the Lord will not abandon you. And pray.’

“When I got back to the hotel I immediately tried, and filled my hands with all those whom I love and those who are loved by those I love, and Rita, of course. I gathered them all up and said, ‘Lord do not forget my people.’ What do you think Esther?”

31. August 1992, Berkeley

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ETTER FROM

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WA

M

ANUKYAN TO

E

STHER

G

ANTMAN

Esther, my dear, a week has passed. Grisha is still in intensive care in a coma. The lunatic who drove out into the oncoming lane was killed instantly, along with his wife and mother-in-law who were sitting in the backseat. It is a pure fluke that Grisha is still alive. In a headlong collision like that nobody survives, not even with airbags. I waited a whole hour at the airport, then took a taxi and went home. Alex was there. Grisha was going to come to collect him and go to the airport together, but rang to say he was short of time and would drive straight there. I thank the Lord he did not take Alex with him because the passenger seat next to the driver is the most dangerous. But that was only afterward. The first thought which came into my head was that while I was in Belorussia he had not been living at home. Now that is of no consequence.

The doctors’ prognosis couldn’t have been worse, but then yesterday I was told that Grisha was a little better. They had removed his spleen and operated on his lungs, because the ribs had torn the pulmonary tissue, but all the other traumas were not dangerous. The main operation was on his spine, and they could not say whether mobility would be restored. At present his legs are paralysed. I keep remembering what Daniel said about my being prepared for serious trials. I am not prepared for them.

They don’t let me in to see Grisha, so I haven’t seen him since I came back, or rather, since I left.

I am living like a robot. Only now do I realize how dear he is to me. I even thought I would prefer it if he left me completely and went to live with his vixen, just as long as he lived. I have not phoned you yet because I’m afraid of blubbing down the line. When I write it’s quite another matter. I feel as if our trip was three years ago, but only one week has passed.

All the time I have this strange thought, not so much a thought as a feeling, that something of this kind was fated to happen, and that it was my obsession with my inner travails which did not let me avert it. Mother told me one time about her grandmother who was a complete witch and knew everything in advance. She once tore up my grandfather’s train ticket and thereby saved his life, because the train crashed and a lot of people died. Another time before a scarlet fever epidemic began she took her three children and went to stay in the country with a relative. In their street in Warsaw half the children died of scarlet fever. What nonsense I am writing to you. Forgive me, please.

With love,

Ewa

32. August 1992, Redford, England

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ETTER FROM

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EATA

S

EMYONOVICH TO

M

ARIA

W

ALEWICZ

Dear Marysia,

I cannot tell you how sad I was that you refused to go to Emsk. I really do not understand. If I, the wife of a deceased Nazi collaborator, decided to undertake the journey why did you not want to? I got home two days ago and am still walking around sorting out my impressions. The town has not forgotten our family. Father’s grammar school stands in the same place, our house has been remodeled and has a history museum in it now. Can you imagine, I found a portrait of father and uncle and our family photograph taken five years before the war. You are in a short dress and I am already a young woman. There is also a photograph of grandfather Adam in the museum. There are almost no Poles left in the town. First the Germans shot them, then the Russians arrived and dealt with the rest. In the whole town only Sabina Rzewska remains of the people we knew.

My most important meeting was with Dieter Stein. I got on very well with him in those years. He ate at our table and helped me a great deal with Ivan. When Ivan got drunk, he had a way of pacifying him, but when it turned out that he was a Jew and a partisan, I thought his helpfulness had not been out of kindness but only because of the need to conceal who he really was. I was the first to say, when Ivan brought him home, that he was a Jew. It was only when I saw how he sat in the saddle that I was persuaded he was a real Pole. Now everything is the other way round. Dieter is a hero and for everybody Ivan is a war criminal. They were looking for him and if they had found him, they would have put him on trial. He died at just the right moment. After his death there were several trials in England of Belorussians who worked for the Germans during the war, and one was sent to prison.

But enough of me. Who was I for him? The wife of a nightmarish boss, and the sister of the girl he couldn’t keep his eyes off. He came, old, gray, dressed not like a monk but in secular clothes, in a sweater. He was always in the middle of a crowd of people. The same day I went to the church where uncle officiated. It was being repaired, there was scaffolding everywhere, everything was under dustcloths, but Mass was being celebrated in a side chapel. I couldn’t believe my eyes, could it really be Dieter? I had already heard a rumor that he had become a priest, but to see it with my own eyes was something else. He is a Carmelite. Brother Daniel!

He began giving a sermon, saying that he was in this church 50 years ago and, imagine, our name is among those he prays for. People were crowding around him, women were like flies around a honeypot, but I found a moment when he was alone, went over, and asked, “Do you recognize me?” “Beata, Beata, you’re alive! What a joy!” He rushed to kiss me as if I were his sister. Of course I began crying, and so did he. “All my life,” he said, “I have been praying for you as souls of the departed but you are alive.” I said, “And do you pray for Marysia?” “Of course.” He nodded. “For Marysia, too. It was a long time ago, and I loved her very much.”

“She is alive, too,” I said. “She lay one night in a pit under the corpses and climbed out in the morning. I myself thought for many years that she had been killed but she’s alive, alive!” “Jesus, Maria,” he whispered. “How is that possible? Where is she now?” I said, “The same place as you. She is a nun.” “Where?” he asked.

It was just like a film. I said again, “The same place as you, in Israel, in Jerusalem, with the White Sisters of Zion.” “At Ein Karem? In the House of Pierre Ratisbonnne?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied. “She is there.” “Don’t go away, Beata, don’t go away,” he said. “It is like the resurrection of the dead that you and Marysia are still alive. We shall be reunited with our parents and those we love just as we have met today.” Tears flowed down his cheeks.

Can you believe it, Marysia, he hasn’t changed at all. He still has that same childlike face and childlike heart. I had a wicked thought that if you had married back then, you would have been such a happy couple, but just at that moment he said, “See how it was fated for Marysia and me to be joined together in the Lord?”

My dear little sister, I felt so happy in my heart, although I felt a bit hurt on your behalf. I think he will come to see you soon. For you, though, it is less momentous. You have known for a long time that he survived and became a monk, and if you had wanted you could easily have found him. For him, though, this is nothing less than a miracle. For 50 years he has been praying for you as one of the departed, and has discovered that you are alive. Now we know everything is possible in our world, to be lost and to be found.

Then I went to see Daniel off. He left that day.

I also met Sabina. Do you remember the daughter of the agronomist who was in the same class as I was? She is one of the few Poles who have survived here. She told me how hard life was after the war. Many people who found relatives went back to Poland. Others were sent to Siberia. They always regarded Poles as nationalists. It’s perfectly true, we are nationalists. Ivan always respected Poles. He considered that we, unlike the Belorussians, were a strong people. Admittedly, he respected the Germans even more, but we shouldn’t talk about him, only pray. Maria, he was bad and cruel and a drunk, but he loved me. Perhaps in everybody’s else’s eyes he was a sinner, but I sinned against him. I married without love and never did learn to love him. I can truthfully say I was never unfaithful, but the real truth is that all through my life I loved a certain Czesław. It was fated not to be.

At first I was upset that you did not come to Emsk. I pictured us wandering through our childhood haunts, but now I think everything is for the best. I have found the path to your door and perhaps next year I will visit you again. We will sit on your hill beside the grille where there is such a lovely view.

When all is said and done, I am glad I went to Emsk. It brought about something like a reconciliation. For many years I looked into the past and alongside me stood hapless Ivan with all his war crimes. Is that what they were? I can’t say for sure, but his presence beside me was always burdensome. Now I feel free. I have been recognized, and most probably remembered, as the daughter of Walewicz rather than as the wife of Semyonovich. And of course, there is Daniel. It is he most of all who heals me and shows that out of this dreadful experience one can emerge joyful and pure.

I look forward to your letter. Think when it would be best for me to come. Perhaps in the spring after Easter? Or, indeed, for Easter.

Your sister,

Beata

33. September 1992, Tel Aviv

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ETTER FROM

N

APHTALI

L

EJZEROWICZ TO

E

STHER

G

ANTMAN

My dear and respected Esther,

This letter is from Naphtali, if you remember such a person. For my part I remember very well also your husband, Isaak, who lopped my leg off in the forest, and just as well he did because gangrene had already set in and he saved me from death. The only anesthetic was a tumblerful of spirits and a wooden stick I chewed to bits before I lost consciousness from the pain. And you, respected and sweet Esther, handed your husband the tools, and he cut the bone with an ordinary hacksaw but sculpted such a marvelous stump that I have worn out many artificial legs but the stump has never once given me any trouble. It is as good as new. God gave Isaak, may he rest in peace, the hands of a craftsman, and you, too! Just a little about myself. With my one leg I made it to Israel in 1951, and before that was sent all over the place, to Italy, Greece, and Cyprus to camps for prisoners of war, then camps for displaced persons, then just camps. In 1951 I got home, met our lads, and found a place in the military industry, I can tell you as a secret.

I worked in a design office. They had great respect for me there, although I had no proper education. I married a Hungarian Jewess. She was a beautiful woman but had G-d knows what kind of personality. I had three children with her, two sons and a good daughter. One son is like me, he works, I’ll tell you in secret, in electronics in America. The second is in banking, but in Israel. My daughter, incidentally, is also a doctor. My wife died nine years ago, and at first I wondered whether I should get married again, then I stopped wondering and decided I was fine on my own.

I have a decent pension as a war veteran, an invalid, and so on, and a good apartment. My daughter comes once a week, and I don’t need more. I will say frankly that first I had women courting me, one, two, three, but then I asked myself what I needed that for. I had a nurse from Holon and she came to me in that connection, even while Zhuzha was still alive. So I had no need of anything.

Dear and respected Esther, I like you so much that I immediately decided to get married. I will soon be 80, it is true, but as much as we have left we could live life together. Think about it carefully, but not for too long. However you look at it, we don’t have much time left to think about things, although my grandfather died at the age of 103. What else can I say about my faults? I am a bit hard of hearing. That’s all. You would suit me very well. I will tell you truthfully, I like you very much. We have a shared past, you were also in Puszcza at that time. If you like, you could just come to visit first. I will meet you at the airport with a taxi.

Write to me at the address on the envelope.

I await your positive reply,

Naphtali Lejzerowicz.

Oh, I forgot to say also that I have five grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

34. 1994, Be’er Sheva

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ETTER FROM

T

ERESA TO

V

ALENTINA

F

ERDINANDOVNA

Dear Valentina,

This will be the last letter, I think, before you leave. Phone so that we can meet you at the airport. Our whole family is preparing for your arrival. I think Sosik is fully aware that we are looking forward to you and is excited, too. He is an exceptionally sensitive creature with unerring reactions. You only have to be able to decipher them. Both Efim and I read all his impulses like an open book. He plays marbles for hours at a time. He has favorite ones and unfavorite ones and he endows them with different qualities. When something disturbs him or he is not pleased, he brings a yellowy-pink pebble which is misshapen and puts it very delicately in your hand. A black pebble with a white belt is a stone for something which has turned out well, and it is a particularly good sign when Sosik puts it in his mouth. Altogether his behavior reveals an amazing connection between the spiritual world and the world of nature. He is an ideal mediator between different forces and can pacify all around him. Literally a few days ago a young family looked in on us, parishioners of Efim, and they were having a terrible quarrel. Efim instructed them for one and a half hours but things only got worse. Then Sosik came and immediately reconciled them. He said some word or other. I need to warn you, dear Valentina, that what you will see is unusual. Our boy speaks but people cannot understand his language. He speaks the language of the angels. He utters some words we do not know over a withered flower and a few days later the flower revives. There is an amazing aura emanating from the child but he hardly says anything in human language, although he can say “Mama,” “Papa,” and “me.”

He can walk but his movements are not very smooth. The doctors think he should do exercises but he doesn’t like that. From the day he was born we decided to raise him without compulsion and not to force him to do anything he found difficult or did not want to do. For the same reason we do not take him to a special school for children with Down’s syndrome, to be taught by pedagogues and psychologists. It is difficult for us to explain to the doctors that he is a higher being, and not disabled.

I am writing in so much detail to prepare you a little for meeting him. There is so much in this child that is enigmatic, mysterious, and hidden, not yet revealed, that Efim and I keep the knowledge to ourselves and do not share it with anyone. We can see from the reaction of many people that his special chosen status is evident not only to us. The sense of reverence which our boy evokes in us, his parents, is something you will of course be able to share.

Dear Valentina, I do not want to burden you with requests but, please, the only thing I would ask for is cassettes with children’s songs. In Russia there were so many wonderful cartoons which we cannot get hold of here. We don’t have a video player and Efim doesn’t consider it appropriate to bring a television into the house, in which I fully agree with him, but it would be good to give Sosik the opportunity of hearing children’s music and songs. It seems to me that he understands Russian far better than Hebrew. I have to admit that I communicate with him on an extra-lingual level which is difficult for me to define, but you will immediately feel it as soon as you meet him.

Efim has arranged with a nun we know, who lives in the Old Town, to find you a place in her convent for a few days so that you can live in that incomparable atmosphere.

Efim and I have devised a whole program of trips. One of them, to the Dead Sea, we will take as a family, together with Sosik. He very much likes bathing in the Dead Sea and the doctors say that salt has a beneficial effect on relaxed muscles.

I’m simply burning with impatience to see you as soon as possible, dear Valentina.

With love,

Teresa

35. 1994, Moscow

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ETTER FROM

V

ALENTINA

F

ERDINANDOVNA TO

T

ERESA AND

E

FIM

Dearest Teresa, Dear Efim,

I could not write a letter to you immediately because I was so overflowing with impressions. It is impossible to convey over the telephone even the hundredth part of my gratitude to you and to fate which gave me the good fortune this late in life to visit the Holy Land. Two weeks were a single drop of time and flew past like two minutes. Now I am going through my impressions and notes and trying to articulate what exactly it was that most impressed me, apart from seeing you in your home, which I will come to.

Perhaps the most amazing discovery for me was the enormous diversity of the Christian trends in Israel. Theoretically I, who all my life have been translating Christian literature for samizdat and only in recent years have seen my translations brought out by official publishing houses, on good paper and with my name as the translator, should have been well acquainted with the diversity of opinion which exists on any theological question. But it was truly during these two weeks that I saw for myself the diversity of Christians—Greeks, Copts, Ethiopians, Italians, and Latin Americans, messianic churches, Baptists, Adventists, and Pentecostals. The history of all the splits and schisms came to life. There are neither conquerors nor conquered, the Monophysite and the Aryan, the Pharisee and the Sadducee coexist in the same time and space.

I am full of joy and perplexity. What puzzles me most of all is the fact that all this fire-breathing diversity is situated in the heart of active and self-sufficient Judaism, which appears not to notice the immense Christian world. Furthermore, all this is embedded in the domain of Islam, for which Israel is also one of the centers of life and faith. These three worlds appear to exist in the same space but almost without intersecting.

I stood through the long liturgy which Efim conducted, and then drove to Haifa to Daniel, and his Mass had nothing in common with the service conducted by Father Efim. Incidentally, in the small room on the table I forgot two sheets with the text of the liturgy which Father Daniel conducted. It was a beautiful, joyous, and very meaningful service which all fitted into half an hour, and I did not find half the prayers which are recited at Mass. Even the Creed was missing!

What a lot of food for thought! Here in Moscow I have always been considered too emancipated. Many members of the Orthodox clergy have told me that I am infected with the “Latin heresy,” and I have gone to great efforts to return the cultural dimension to the stagnant medium by the only means available to me, my new translations into Russian of the texts of the New Testament. In this I saw an opportunity of serving church unity. At least, that was my intention. My situation as you know is unusual. As a child I was baptized by a Russian grandmother into the Orthodox Church, I was brought up by a Lithuanian aunt, a Catholic, and so my whole life I have stood at this crossroads and, coming closer to the Dominicans who support my translation work, I am realizing the ecumenical idea. It is not I who chose this, but destiny ordained this place for me.

It always seemed to me that a certain narrowness of mind is characteristic of many in our country precisely because of the state ban on intellectual and spiritual exchange during the last 70 years of our history. In the Western world, however, this ban did not exist, so where does the total refusal to “mix” and the nonacceptance of each other come from? I would like to know what Efim thinks on this issue.

Now, about Itzhak. Sweet Teresa, dear Efim, at the risk of wounding you and incurring your displeasure, I have to say the following: your little boy is perfectly marvelous. He is touching and infinitely sweet, but your sense of anticipation and hope that he is, I can hardly bring myself to write the words, the One Who Is Promised, let us put it that way, seems to me a delusion of profound parental love.

If I am wrong and he really does possess the “second nature,” again I cannot bring myself to repeat your words, then it will manifest itself independently of your involvement. It seems to me more correct from every point of view to give him the opportunity of going to the special school which you so categorically reject. You yourselves told me that children with this syndrome cannot under any circumstances be considered intellectually backward, that it is simply a special kind of person who develops in accordance with other laws, and they should converse and read and socialize. The fact that under the guidance of special instructors they can act in plays, make music, draw, and do other things to develop them is splendid and will do Sosik no harm at all. If he really is the one for whom you take him, these skills will not detract from the mission which he is to fulfil.

My dears, your heroic and even saintly life fills me with admiration. The path you have chosen is worthy of the most profound respect. Of course I understand that the path of each person is unique and each makes his own way to the truth. But why do so many people concerned exclusively with seeking truth move in completely opposite directions?

That is a matter to ponder.

My dears, I thank you once more for this trip. Next month I shall be 73 and I do not think I shall be able ever again to come see you. The more precious therefore was this meeting for me. I will always pray for you.

I ask for your prayers,

Valentina

36. 1995, Be’er Sheva

L

ETTER FROM

E

FIM

D

OVITAS TO

V

ALENTINA

F

ERDINANDOVNA

Dear Valentina Ferdinandovna,

We have received your letter and Teresa has asked me to reply. A matter which we will not discuss is the destiny of Itzhak. That is the province of a different department. All that is required of us is attention and the ability to hear the inner voice which comes into our hearts from above. Discerning spirits is a special gift, and Teresa possesses it to a high degree, that is undoubted. I make no mention of my own modest abilities.

The part of your letter that upset me was where you wrote so frivolously about the pluralism which is increasingly taking possession of the Church. What you believe to be modern and important and what you call mutual understanding is something entirely impossible. I do not doubt that this is linked to the unnaturalness of your position: I have in mind your simultaneous dwelling in the bosom of Orthodoxy and your collaboration over many years with Catholics. It must be some kind of a misunderstanding. I find it hard to imagine any bishop who could give his blessing to the work of an Orthodox person virtually within the Dominican Order.

My personal path went by way of the East. In my younger years I was enamored of Buddhism, and the freedom of Buddhism seemed to me a supreme achievement. I practiced a great deal and advanced quite far along that path. I was halted by the void. There is no God in Buddhism, and I found that God was more important to me than freedom. I did not want to be free from God, I longed for a personal God, and he was revealed to me in Orthodoxy. The principal and most fruitful path is that of Orthodoxy. I do not want simplified Christianity. Those of whom you speak, all those hosts of reformers and popularizers, are seekers not of God but of an easy path to God. You will get nowhere along an easy path. I find attempts to create bilingual gospels laughable, in particular the attempt to translate the service from Church Slavonic into Russian. What for? In order not to make the effort and not to learn the divine, if somewhat artificial but solemn, language specially carved for this purpose? This language also provides a link with a tradition which is realized at depths and which the modern Russian language cannot plumb.

We do not know the canons well enough, but it is precisely through them that the full profundity of Orthodoxy is revealed.

You talk of a diversity which delighted you! Valentina Ferdinandovna, do you really not understand that a sumptuous, immensely rich fabric is taken, a little snippet is cut out of it, and people say, look, this is entirely sufficient! It is for this reason that I broke completely with Father Daniel Stein. His search for a narrow, minimal Christianity is a deleterious path. In that scrap which he has defined for himself as “necessary and sufficient” is contained one thousandth, one millionth part of Christianity. I did not try to restrain you when you decided to go to his Mass. I thought you would yourself see this violation, this penury! But you brought into my home a paper with a few truncated texts which he considers to be a liturgy! I had never seen this text before and would not have taken it into my hands. Our break with him occurred before he had arrived at this minimalism or populism or whatever you want to call it. Now I have investigated this text. Daniel has no right to call himself a priest. It is only through a dereliction of duty on the part of the Church authorities that such a disgusting thing can be perpetrated.

Personally I feel grateful to him. He played an important role in the life of our family and helped the marriage of Teresa and myself to occur (it was also thanks to you, and I will always intone a prayer of gratitude for you), and the miracle of the birth of our son was accomplished with his blessing. However, Daniel’s views seem to me totally reprehensible.

The Son of God came to the world through the flesh. In Hebrew, good news is “besora” and meat or flesh is “basar.” The words are kindred. That is the greatest news, God in our flesh. Truly it is. In the flesh of my son Itzhak. This boy has joined us to God in a special way. My flesh has taken on the divine nature through him. I had my son circumcised not so that he should be a Judaean but so that he should become the Messiah.

A battle is raging in heaven and on earth, and the battle is ever more furious, and one must stand at the place where one has been put and not seek facility and comfort. Only in this way can we return to the sources of the Church, to its martyrs, to its heartland.

Of course, it is easier to talk to the reformers. They are prepared to accept anything you like, abortions, homosexual love, even the priesthood of women, and they are prepared to throw out anything you like, even the Holy Trinity!

Dear Valentina Ferdinandovna, our disagreements are so great that further communication does not appear to me to be possible. As a husband responsible to the Lord for my wife, I have forbidden Teresa any further communication with you, and I hope no further supplementary explanation will be required of me in this respect.

Sincerely yours,

Hiereus Efim Dovitas

37. 1995, Be’er Sheva

L

ETTER FROM

E

FIM

D

OVITAS TO THE

L

ATIN

P

ATRIARCH OF

J

ERUSALEM

(Copy to the Abbot of the Carmelite Monastery of Stella Maris)

Your Excellency,

Pressing circumstances oblige me to address to you a letter the nature of which profoundly dismays me. However, my Christian duty has prompted me to write it since, as I am profoundly persuaded, the information contained therein requires close scrutiny on the part of those in charge of the Latin Patriarchate.

Coming to Israel in 1980, since 1984 I have served in a pastoral capacity within the Orthodox Church in Be’er Sheva. In the community which I lead the service is conducted in the Church Slavonic language, which is in accordance with the spirit of the Orthodox Church. The greater part of my parishioners are Russian or Russian speakers and only at Easter do we joyfully mark the festival with proclamations in many languages of Christian Churches.

Within the tradition of the Orthodox Church since ancient times, two variations of the liturgy have been accepted, that of Vasiliy the Great and of St. John Chrysostomos, to which we adhere.

As a specialist in the sphere of the liturgy, I am also well familiar with the structure of the Latin Mass in its generally accepted version. It is well known that in local churches certain variations in the service are permitted in respect of the sequence of the reading of psalms and hymns. However, in the churches both of the Eastern and Western rites there exists an immutable liturgical canon.

Some time ago there came into my hands by chance the text of a Mass which has been adopted for service in the Church of Elijah by the Spring on Mount Carmel, entrusted to your wardship. The text, compiled by the father superior of the Church of Elijah by the Spring, aroused in me such profound consternation that I have considered it my duty to forward it to Your Excellency for your information. In the depleted text the Symbol of Faith is absent, and this circumstance alone is cause for concern.

I cannot imagine that a service of this kind has been approved by the Holy See.

Efim Dovitas, Priest of the Russian Orthodox Church

38.

T

EXT OF THE

“S

UPPER OF

R

EMEMBRANCE

” (L

ITURGY

)

OF THE

J

EWISH

C

HRISTIAN

C

OMMUNITY OF

H

AIFA

,

COMPILED BY

B

ROTHER

D

ANIEL

S

TEIN

(After the lighting of candles and pronouncing of the blessing)

DANIEL. The grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

CONGREGATION. Amen.

(Psalms 43 and 32, or Penitential Rite)

Readings—Psalms and canticles.

Sermon.

Bracha (Blessing)

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, maker of heaven and earth.

CONGREGATION. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who alone works wonders (Psalm 72:18)

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who created people in the image of Himself and created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:27)

CONGREGATION. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who alone works wonders. (Psalm 72:18)

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who covenanted with Abraham and his descendants.

CONGREGATION. Blessed be …

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, gracious and merciful, liberating and redeeming, who delivered us from captivity in Egypt and has now assembled the sons of Israel 2,000 years after their dispersal.

CONGREGATIONn. Blessed be …

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, for the Torah which He gave us through Moshe, His servant, and through the prophets who came after Him.

CONGREGATION. Blessed be …

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who in the fullness of time sent His only Son, Jesus of Nazareth, to be our Savior.

CONGREGATION. Blessed be …

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who has found it meet to renew His covenant with us through His Son and to join all the peoples of the earth in sharing the inheritance of His children.

CONGREGATION. Blessed be …

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who by His great mercy gave us new life in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

CONGREGATION. Blessed be …

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, pouring down upon us his spirit for the forgiveness of sins and leading us along the path to our inheritance.

CONGREGATION. Blessed be …

DANIEL. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, faithful in His every word.

CONGREGATION. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who alone works wonders. Blessed forever is His glorious name. May the whole world be filled with His glory! Amen! Amen! Amen.

DANIEL. The Lord be with you.

CONGREGATION. And with you.

DANIEL. Proclaim with me the greatness of Yahweh.

CONGREGATION. Let us acclaim His name together. (Psalm 34:3)

DANIEL. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

Trisagion.

Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us.

CONGREGATION. Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of His glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of Yahweh. Hosanna in the highest.

ALL. May the Lord hear our prayers and send us His holy spirit that we may become one in Jesus Christ, His Son, in the hour when we celebrate the feast of the covenant as we were commanded.

Remembrance

DANIEL. When the time came He took his place at the table, and the apostles with Him. Then He took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:14–19)

Blessed be the Lord our God, ruler of the world, who causes bread to come forth from the earth.

CONGREGATION. Amen.

(They receive the bread.)

DANIEL. He did the same with the cup after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood poured out for you. (Luke 22:20). Do this in remembrance of me. Blessed be the Lord our God, ruler of the world, creating the fruit of the vine.”

CONGREGATION. Amen.

(They receive the wine.)

DANIEL. Each time you eat this bread and drink from this cup, remember the death of our Lord until He comes.

CONGREGATION. We proclaim His death and testify to His resurrection until He comes. Maranatha!

OR

DANIEL. Each time we eat this bread and drink from this cup, the Messiah is with us and we are with Him.

Praise

Psalm 23 (or another)

DANIEL. Sing a new song to Yahweh, for He has performed wonders.

CONGREGATION. His saving power is in His right hand and His holy arm. (Psalm 98:1)

DANIEL. Great is Yahweh and worthy of all praise, His greatness beyond all reckoning.

CONGREGATION. Each age will praise Your deeds to the next, proclaiming Your mighty works. (Psalms 145:4)

DANIEL. Yahweh is generous to all, His tenderness embraces all His creatures.

CONGREGATION. All look to you in hope and you feed them with the food of the season.

DANIEL. With generous hand, you satisfy the desires of every living creature. (Psalm 145:16)

CONGREGATION. Blessed is Yahweh, the God of Israel, ruler of the world, feeding all.

Hymn of thanksgiving.

DANIEL. Give thanks to Him and bless His name, for Yahweh is good.

CONGREGATION. His faithful love is everlasting, His constancy from age to age. (Psalm 100:5)

DANIEL. He remembers His covenant forever, the promise He laid down for a thousand generations, which He concluded with Abraham, the oath He swore to Isaac. He established it as a statute for Jacob, an everlasting covenant. (Psalms 105:8–10). You freed us from slavery through your great mercy and in the desert you did not leave us and gave us, Lord our God, manna about which neither we nor our fathers knew. We praise you for the bread with which you fill us and for your word which you have put in our hearts, we praise you Lord, Father of our Master, Jesus. You have blessed us through Him, through the Messiah, with all heavenly blessings.

Blessed be the Father who has made us able to share the lot of God’s holy people and with them to inherit the light. Because that is what He has done. It is He who has rescued us from the ruling force of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son that He loves, and in Him we enjoy our freedom, the forgiveness of sin. (Col. 1:12–14)

CONGREGATION. (Canticle) Who speaks of the power of the Lord let him sing his praise to Him.

DANIEL. May the Lord our God have mercy on His people and his creation. Spread over us the tabernacle of your peace and let all your children live in peace. Look down upon the Christian community and direct us by your spirit and gather us from the four corners of the earth into the kingdom which you have prepared for your children. Lord, hear this prayer, and remember … (here are added particular prayers and names of people).

CONGREGATION. Hear our voice and save us.

DANIEL. Through Jesus we were named God’s children and we all say together: Our Father … (standing, as witnessed by the Didache).

DANIEL. The peace of the Lord be with you all!

(Bow, greeting)

DANIEL. May God show kindness and bless us, and make His face shine on us.

CONGREGATION.Then the earth will acknowledge your ways, and all nations your power to save. (Psalm 67:1–2)

(Bow, greeting)

Blessing of Aaron (or Thessalonians 3:16 etc.)

39. November 1990, Freiburg

F

INAL TALK

BY

B

ROTHER

D

ANIEL

S

TEIN TO SCHOOLCHILDREN

Since 1959 I have been living in Israel. It is a great joy to live in that country. It is the land of our Master, who walked the length and breadth of it. I, too, have walked almost all the length and breadth of it because it is not that large, our country. Even though there are modern cities and research centers, medical clinics and atomic energy in Israel, even tanks and planes—everything a modern state is expected to have—you can still walk through the countryside. In Central Europe you can no longer just go for a walk in the forest. Everything is fenced off, every scrap of land is spoken for, but in Israel there is still a lot of dry, empty, hilly land and there are deserted places where you can walk along a path and meet nobody. The scenery has not changed since the Master walked here. Perhaps that is what is so attractive about these places, especially in Galilee. Our land evokes love and it evokes hatred but it leaves nobody indifferent, not even those who do not acknowledge the existence of God the Creator. Since childhood I have been aware of the presence of a divine power which preserves our world, and when that feeling weakened I was given proof which confirmed that man is not alone in the world. We sometimes long for proof of the existence of God and it is something that even great philosophers have investigated. Not only St. Augustine, but also Kant.

In Israel there are places which testify to this themselves, for example, the banks of Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee as it is called in the New Testament. The harbor there is in the same place and there are the same reeds by the bank, the same rocks on the shore. This is the place from where the boat with the Master set off and the place where he proclaimed the Beatitudes, where five thousand people, almost half the population of this region, spread over the mountain where the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves took place. The very land here testifies. It is amazing that little Lake Kinneret in a remote province in the outer reaches of the ecumene should become known to the whole world. It was from this place that two millennia ago the news went out to the world that all people, the bad, the irrational, the wicked, the foolish, and also those who have no belief in the Redeemer at all, are forgiven because the best of all people, the true Son of God, took their sins upon himself. He said that today people are free from sin and confirmed that the Spirit of God can exist in a person if only that person so wishes.

I know several dozen people who have come to Israel for a week and stayed for the whole of their lives. There is a Japanese man who came on a tourist trip twenty years ago and never left. Today he conducts tourist trips for his compatriots. I know a Dutchman who, from the bottom of Lake Kinneret, salvaged exactly the kind of boat the Apostle Peter had. The Dutchman spent ten years restoring it, saved it from beetles and worms which attacked it, and to this day he lives on the bank of the lake next to this boat. I know several Germans who have been unable to leave our country because they have come to love it so much.

This is a land of living history which continues to be measured on a biblical scale. What is happening in it today could perfectly well be written in the Bible. The history of humanity is concentrated in this place. It is not chance that something explosive occurred here which changed the consciousness of the world, or at least of the European and Arab worlds. From here, from within a very small people, there emerged a great teacher, Yeshua. He spoke a language that a modern Israeli could understand. He lived in this culture, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, observed all the customs of the Jewish religion, which he practiced. His first disciples were in a sense Judaean Protestants. Christianity, a word that the first disciples of Jesus, his twelve apostles, never heard, began as reformed Judaism. Only a century later did it break its umbilical cord and go out into the world of Greece, Rome, and Asia Minor. The Jerusalem community of the followers of Yeshua, headed by the Apostle James, existed for several decades. It was this community which was the mother Church of all later Christian communities, and it was in its language—Ancient Hebrew with an admixture of Aramaic—that the paschal meeting of the Master with his disciples took place which in the Christian world is known as the Last Supper.

On the Cross of Yeshua the inscription INRI—Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudorum—was written in three languages, Ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. For the first one hundred years, Christians celebrated their liturgy in Ancient Hebrew and today, in Israel, we are again conducting services in this ancient, original Christian language, the language the Master spoke.

When I came to Israel, it was important for me to understand what our Master believed. The more I immersed myself in study of that time, the more clearly I saw that Jesus was a real Judean who called in his sermons for observance of the ten commandments, but considered that mere observance was not enough, that love is the only response man can make to God, and that the most important thing in human behavior is not to do evil to another, to show sympathy and compassion. The Master called for an expansion of love. He did not hand down any new dogmas, and the novelty of his teaching is that he placed Love above the Law. The longer I live in the world the more obvious I find that truth.

Thank you for your patience and for listening to me so attentively.

I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

ELKE RAUSCHE. What is your most terrible memory of the war years? And what is your most joyful?

DANIEL STEIN. In the course of many long years I have been guilty of a lot of wrong and foolish actions. There is one act I have been grieving over my whole life and it is also my most terrible memory. One time there came a phone call to the police station and we were informed that partisans had attacked two German soldiers inspecting a telephone line. One was killed but the other managed to escape. As he escaped, he noticed that people working in the fields were showing someone the direction in which he had run. After he returned to his unit they phoned and informed us about the incident. We were ordered to exact retribution from the village. That meant they would shoot one in every ten inhabitants and burn the village to the ground. Large forces were assembled, subdivisions of the German army and gendarmerie, some two hundred fifty soldiers and policemen. The village was surrounded, the houses were searched, everybody was driven out into the fields. Of two hundred people twenty were to be selected to be shot.

I went to Major Reinhold and said, “Herr Major, we are not on the frontline. You are in charge of this district, responsible for the life and death of these people. Why kill the innocent? These are peasants who provide themselves and our army with provisions.” Major Reinhold and I were on good terms, so I could allow myself this sort of liberty. He replied, “Fine, then find those who helped the partisans in the field. That will be enough.”

I was in great difficulties. I went to the village elder and explained that somebody had to die, and that if he could find two it might save the life of twenty others. He needed to point someone out. The elder immediately understood the situation. He summoned the local fool, a mentally backward lad of about seventeen, and the forester. This forester, a few weeks before the incident, had betrayed a boy who had been shooting at Germans from his house, which was some way outside the village. The police had found the boy, found he had a rifle, and shot him. I was present at this event and had to translate the order to execute him:

“In the name of the Great German Reich …”

Now this informer had himself become the victim. I remember thinking at the time that justice had triumphed. The forester fell to his knees and began imploring me, “Mein Herr, tell them I am not guilty. I am prepared to show them where the partisans are hiding.” The situation was appalling both for him and for me. For him, because the country people had heard what he was saying and would certainly take revenge on him. For me, because I had to translate what he had said and there might be Silesians among the German soldiers who had understood him. I took a risk. I needed to be sure to use the word ‘partisans’ in my reply, and I told the police chief, “He says he is not guilty and did not show the partisans which way the soldier had run.”

The police chief said, “Waste him.”

At this the forester began begging the chief of police, promising to take them all right now, if they wished, to the partisans’ camp. I again translated falsely. Then they were shot, the forester and the idiot. The forester’s house was burned down, but only one house, not the whole village. I later learned that he had eleven children; and the idiot was completely innocent. To this day that memory is a heavy burden on my heart. It is a terrible memory.

Yes …, a joyful memory? Forgive me, right now I can’t think of any. Perhaps those hours I spent with Marysia Walewicz. It was the first time I had fallen in love and there was such a powerful sense of joy at the beauty of a woman, a woman’s charm. Yes, probably that.

CHRISTOPH ECKE. Do you like our town?

DANIEL STEIN. Freiburg I find very touching. The day I arrived here I noticed a stream which winds all round the town in a stone channel. I thought how much this modest stream beautifies it. I assumed it was one of the sights of the Middle Ages which have survived to our days, but then I came to the town square and was shown the new synagogue, built in place of the one destroyed during the war. I found that the stream originates as a fountain beside the synagogue, a fountain symbolizing the tears of those who mourn the Jewish people of your town who perished. Some two thousand of them were taken to France and died in a death camp there. I think this is the most beautiful memorial to the Shoah I have seen. The stream really is a very beautiful feature of Freiburg.

ANDREAS WIEGEL. Could we come to Israel in the holidays for you to show us your favorite places?

DANIEL STEIN. Yes, of course. I conduct tours all over Israel. Being a monk is not a profession. My profession nowadays is that of a tour guide. I will leave you my address. If you write in advance we will be able to show you around, but do be sure to write in advance, because sometimes a lot of tourists arrive at the same time and I don’t much enjoy showing large groups around.

ELISABETH BAUCH. How do you get on with the Jews? I mean, what is their attitude toward you?

DANIEL STEIN. The Jews are my brothers. My own brother has a family and they long ago got used to the fact that they have a weird relative who is a Catholic priest. I have very close, warm relations with my three nieces and nephew. There are scholarly Jews and even rabbis with whom I have friendly and indeed profound relations. When I came to Israel I was welcomed as someone who had fought Fascism, even as a hero. Some have accepted the fact that I am a Christian while others find it bothersome, but I have no sense of hostility toward me personally. Of course, there are pages in the history of Christianity which one would like to tear out, which, alas, is not possible. If Jews fear and mistrust Christians there is a historical basis for that. After all, the Catholic Church often organized pogroms against the Jews.

FATIMA ADASHI. What is your attitude to unbelievers?

DANIEL STEIN. Dear Fatima, I have to admit that I have never in my life come across an unbeliever. Well, almost never. The majority of people, apart from those who completely and unconditionally accept the faith they have chosen or inherited from their parents, have their own ideas about a Supreme Power, a Mover of the world which we believers call the Creator. There are also people who deify some idea of their own, proclaim it God, serve and worship it. That idea can be anything at all. This type of person includes convinced Communists and Fascists. Sometimes it is a very modest idea, for example, about extraterrestrials or vegetarianism, but human beings are capable of deifying any idea. In the case of vegetarianism there is no danger to other people, but in the case of Fascism there certainly was.

Among my friends there was a doctor who, in theory, rejected the presence of God in the world, but he lived a life of such selfless service to the sick that his verbal non-recognition of God was of no significance. I have exactly the same attitude toward believers and unbelievers. The only difference is that I am particularly ashamed of Christians when they commit crimes.

THOMAS LÜTOW. Next time you come to Germany, which town will you go to? I would like to hear you again. It seems to me I have a lot of questions, but right now I can’t think of a single one. Oh, I have a question! Have you not written a book about all your adventures?

DANIEL STEIN. I do not know when I will next come to Germany. I have a lot of work at home and it is always difficult to get away. It is good when a person has a lot of questions. When a question ripens inside someone, it begins to disturb them and the answer invariably appears in one way or another. I am not writing any books, I am a very bad writer. In addition, I speak so often that I really have no time for writing. I barely manage to reply to letters.

40. 1994, Haifa

F

ROM

H

ILDA’S DIARY

A few days ago I was tidying up after the children’s group, scraping off plasticine, washing dishes, and was sure I was alone in the house. I went into the room which we ceremoniously call “the Office” and saw Daniel sitting in the semidarkness on a chair in the corner with his eyes closed, his lips moving, and his fingers darting to and fro. He had knitting needles in his hands. He was knitting! Or did I imagine it? He didn’t even hear me come in. Actually, his hearing is going, I’ve been noticing that for a long time. I went out again quietly, feeling a little sad. It was a bit comical, too, as if I had caught him doing something improper.

Yesterday we celebrated my 50th birthday. We decided for old times’ sake to have a picnic next to the church. It was Sunday and after the service there were lots of people, almost the entire parish. We had visitors. Several people from Jerusalem, Beba from Tiberias, Father Vsevolod, Friedman, Kopeishchikov, Nina and Syoma Ziegler, and a lot of children. Our favorite “little brother,” Julien Sommier from Akko, came; our crazy “little sister” Sofia, who lives on top of a cupboard because her small apartment is crammed with all the homeless people she manages to attract; an American lady professor; a Russian lady writer; and a Hungarian beggar who has settled beside our church. There must have been 50 or 60 people. We put out tables.

The children sang “Happy Birthday,” Father Vsevolod sang “Long Life” in Russian with his bass voice, then they all gave me presents, lots of foolish nonsense. Heaven knows where I’ll put it all. The children’s drawings were the best, both pretty and not taking up any space. Doctor Friedman gave me an amazing book about the art of the Cycladic Islands with its decorative marine beauties, dolphins, and shells. This is believed to be the art of lost Atlantis. It would be great to be an artist in my next life. Then Daniel came out with a big bundle, opened it, and took out a red sweater. It was the most unexpected present. He had knitted it himself! He unfolded it, laid it on the table, and said, “I thought I had forgotten how to knit, but my hands remember. I knitted all sorts of things with the nuns, they taught me how. They sold socks and sweaters in the market, during the war of course. They spun the wool themselves, but they didn’t have such good wool. Enjoy wearing it. Red suits blondes.” It is a big red sweater with a golf collar.

Later, when everyone had left, I went through the presents and found one I hadn’t opened. It was a round Bedouin mirror in an embroidered cloth frame, one of those things they had in their tents attached to the walls. I looked into it. A wrinkled, red, sunburnt face looked back at me, and light-colored hair, far lighter than I used to have because it was half gray, and small, pale eyes in pink eyelids. Dry dark lips. It was me. At first I didn’t recognize myself.

What would today have been like if 30 years ago I had stayed in Bavaria, in an outlying suburb of Munich, on the banks of Lake Starnberg?

June 2006, Moscow

L

ETTER FROM

L

UDMILA

U

LITSKAYA TO

E

LENA

K

OSTIOUKOVITCH

Dear Lyalya,

As I write, tears are streaming down my cheeks. I am not a real writer. Real writers do not cry. Those live people I saw beside the live Daniel were different people, mine are invented. Even Daniel is part invention. There never was a Hilda, instead there was a hard, authoritarian woman whose life is completely closed to me. There never was a Musa, a Teresa, or a Gershon. They are all phantasms. There were other people I did meet, but I have no right to make free with their real lives.

That marvelous German woman whose angelic image I have placed beside Daniel left her home in Germany and moved to a small Orthodox community in Lithuania. The abbot there is a Georgian, phenomenally musical, and sometimes sisters from Georgia come to visit him and organize such spiritually uplifting concerts that “Hilda,” with her German musical sensitivity, is reduced to tears. But what on earth am I sobbing about?

I will not give her real name, but I can’t deny myself the satisfaction, dear Lyalya, of telling you that she is one of heaven’s angels, not a human being. Only recently she arrived back in Lithuania from Germany on a small tractor she had urged under its own steam for 500 kilometers along village tracks at a speed of 10 kilometers an hour, a thin, graying blonde woman with a rucksack on her back, mounted up on the driver’s seat. Their community is poor and desperately needed a tractor. I could never have invented anything like that.

I am not a real writer and this book is not a novel but a collage. I snip out pieces of my own life and of the lives of other people and glue together “without glue” (pause …) “a living tale from fragments of days.”

I am terribly tired. Sometimes I go into Andrey’s room. From his window you can see a maelstrom of branches, and our diseased poplars, maples, and birches look much better from the sixth floor then from down below in the children’s playground. I look at the foliage—the leaves are still fresh and green—and my eyes are healed.

I am sending you a fourth part, in fact a fifth part of the whole.

My love,

L.