He was born
in a small town in Belarus in the latter part of the 19th century.
His father, Yitzchok, was a distinguished rabbi. His mother, Tscherna, was a hard-working
woman who raised him and his eleven sisters and brothers in the finest way .
As the years went by, one by one, several of his siblings left the nest to roam in greener pastures, overseas. Unlike them, he elected to stay and get certified as a Jewish ritual slaughterer.
These were not easy times for Jews in the Russian Empire. Many were exposed to the Haskalah ( Jewish Enlightenment Movement) which promoted the use of Hebrew, in Literature, instead of Yiddish, exposed many to the noble ideas of the French Revolution which ignited their political and social involvement and pushed a great number of them to follow the Marxist doctrine and even attempt to set up a Marxist party in Minsk in 1898. He was one of them.
As the years went by, one by one, several of his siblings left the nest to roam in greener pastures, overseas. Unlike them, he elected to stay and get certified as a Jewish ritual slaughterer.
These were not easy times for Jews in the Russian Empire. Many were exposed to the Haskalah ( Jewish Enlightenment Movement) which promoted the use of Hebrew, in Literature, instead of Yiddish, exposed many to the noble ideas of the French Revolution which ignited their political and social involvement and pushed a great number of them to follow the Marxist doctrine and even attempt to set up a Marxist party in Minsk in 1898. He was one of them.
As someone
who is opposed to any form of such doctrines, I try to rationalize this young
man’s political and social choices. These were times when the Marxist ideology
seemed like the ultimate panacea for injustice, inequality, and illiteracy. No
one, including our young hero, had expected that it would fail and fade into
the realm of utopia and in such a short period.
His strong desire to make the world a better place also drove this inquisitive young man to travel to Warsaw in order to meet and befriend Dr. Zamenhof, the Jewish linguist who invented Esperanto. The idea of a world without wars, without religious or linguistic barriers which could be materialized by the use of an international, easy to learn language which would be accessible to all, pushed him to master it almost to perfection. He became one of its most avid advocates and supporters.
In the early part of the twentieth century, this ambitious young man decided to join his sister, Hilda, who had moved to London several years earlier and try his luck there. He started his way as an encyclopedia salesman, albeit not with much success. There were days, I was told, when he suffered hunger and cold. During those times, he would deliberately break a window merely to be arrested, spend the night in a warmer jail cell where he would also get to eat a free hot meal.
Sales, obviously, were not his strong suit. He left London and moved to Oxford. There, our brilliant hero earned a PhD in English Literature.
At the onset of world war I, he was deployed by the British army. During the war, he travelled with the navy all the way to southeast Asia. He did not like what he witnessed there. In his outspoken manner, he criticized the colonial endeavour and protested the way the British treated the locals.
His strong desire to make the world a better place also drove this inquisitive young man to travel to Warsaw in order to meet and befriend Dr. Zamenhof, the Jewish linguist who invented Esperanto. The idea of a world without wars, without religious or linguistic barriers which could be materialized by the use of an international, easy to learn language which would be accessible to all, pushed him to master it almost to perfection. He became one of its most avid advocates and supporters.
In the early part of the twentieth century, this ambitious young man decided to join his sister, Hilda, who had moved to London several years earlier and try his luck there. He started his way as an encyclopedia salesman, albeit not with much success. There were days, I was told, when he suffered hunger and cold. During those times, he would deliberately break a window merely to be arrested, spend the night in a warmer jail cell where he would also get to eat a free hot meal.
Sales, obviously, were not his strong suit. He left London and moved to Oxford. There, our brilliant hero earned a PhD in English Literature.
At the onset of world war I, he was deployed by the British army. During the war, he travelled with the navy all the way to southeast Asia. He did not like what he witnessed there. In his outspoken manner, he criticized the colonial endeavour and protested the way the British treated the locals.
For me,
he was an early version of George Orwell.
His words, protests and harsh condemnation of British imperialism did not go unnoticed. He was dismissed from the army and forced out of the kingdom.
Left with
no choices, our young man moved back to Russia where the early buds of the
Bolshevik revolution were beginning to sprout. Being a firm believer in the
Marxist ideology, he joined the effort.
A short while after the onset of the Revolution, disorder settled in. Our intelligent perceptive hero realized that it was a dream which would never come to fruition. He was a living witness to its collapse and the unavoidable conclusion that as attractive as the solution that it offered to end world maladies, it was doomed to failure.
Shattered by what he observed, he decided to move to Poland.
One day, during a train ride to Vilna, he noticed Sarah, that was her name as he learned later, sitting across the aisle from him and instantly fell in love with her. Her green, lovely eyes and her red wavy hair mesmerized him. Sarah was on her way to get betrothed to a young man that she had never met. When their glimpses met, they both knew that she would never reach her destination.
Sarah was the daughter of a very wealthy wholesale merchant. Our young man joined him, soon after he married Sarah, learned the art of trade, and eventually ran the whole business together with his fiery wife Sarah.
Yesterday’s Marxist became a capitalist and he loved it. He raised two brilliant talented children. They had everything money could buy, maids, nannies, trips and a summer home. They even had a radio where they would listen to the finest operas while our man would describe to his children in, as vivid a manner as possible, the various scenes as he experienced them at Covent Garden or other concert halls. Poland, Polania (in Hebrew translates as “here G-d slept”) for him, was just that, the land of milk and honey.
Unfortunately, history had other plans in store for our protagonist. Twenty years later, the world was thrown into chaos when World War II started.
The infamous Riventrop-Molotov agreement of September 1, 1939, put him and his family at harm’s way. Luckily for some, not for our man and his family, though, they were situated in that part of Poland which fell into the hands of the Russians. As a business owner, a rich bourgeois, our man suddenly became the enemy of the state. “Criminals,” like him deserved only one fate. They should be sent to the Gulag where they would be placed in forced labour camps. On September 3rd, the “culprit” was already on a howling train which made its way eastward to the unknown. He never came back.
This great man was my maternal grandfather, Ben – Zion (son of Zion, in Hebrew). I, Bat-Zion, am named after him and I pledge here and now that I will never desert his legacy and will continue to share his story with the world.
A short while after the onset of the Revolution, disorder settled in. Our intelligent perceptive hero realized that it was a dream which would never come to fruition. He was a living witness to its collapse and the unavoidable conclusion that as attractive as the solution that it offered to end world maladies, it was doomed to failure.
Shattered by what he observed, he decided to move to Poland.
One day, during a train ride to Vilna, he noticed Sarah, that was her name as he learned later, sitting across the aisle from him and instantly fell in love with her. Her green, lovely eyes and her red wavy hair mesmerized him. Sarah was on her way to get betrothed to a young man that she had never met. When their glimpses met, they both knew that she would never reach her destination.
Sarah was the daughter of a very wealthy wholesale merchant. Our young man joined him, soon after he married Sarah, learned the art of trade, and eventually ran the whole business together with his fiery wife Sarah.
Yesterday’s Marxist became a capitalist and he loved it. He raised two brilliant talented children. They had everything money could buy, maids, nannies, trips and a summer home. They even had a radio where they would listen to the finest operas while our man would describe to his children in, as vivid a manner as possible, the various scenes as he experienced them at Covent Garden or other concert halls. Poland, Polania (in Hebrew translates as “here G-d slept”) for him, was just that, the land of milk and honey.
Unfortunately, history had other plans in store for our protagonist. Twenty years later, the world was thrown into chaos when World War II started.
The infamous Riventrop-Molotov agreement of September 1, 1939, put him and his family at harm’s way. Luckily for some, not for our man and his family, though, they were situated in that part of Poland which fell into the hands of the Russians. As a business owner, a rich bourgeois, our man suddenly became the enemy of the state. “Criminals,” like him deserved only one fate. They should be sent to the Gulag where they would be placed in forced labour camps. On September 3rd, the “culprit” was already on a howling train which made its way eastward to the unknown. He never came back.
This great man was my maternal grandfather, Ben – Zion (son of Zion, in Hebrew). I, Bat-Zion, am named after him and I pledge here and now that I will never desert his legacy and will continue to share his story with the world.
Shanah
Tova, Am Yisrael <3
