A Son of Zion

He was born in a small town in Belarus in the latter part of the 19^th 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 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.

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 3^rd, 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

Russia and Yisrael

Last night I attended a concert of the Red Army Choir. It brought fond memories of an early childhood in Yisrael, memories of a home where the Russian culture was an integral part.

My parents who moved to Yisrael in 1949 were born in Belarus and Lithuania. Russian was one of the languages spoken at my home. We listened to Russian songs and we sang them. I will never forget how at the age of seven, my mother, who was a brilliant singer, taught me “Under Moscow’s Nights” (which I can sing in Russian until this day). I used to sing it on family celebrations such as weddings and Bar-Mitsvahs when I had to reach up to the microphone which was always much taller than me. We also sang Russian songs, in their Hebrew translation, during my youth movement days. Those were happy songs. Those were happy times for me.

Unfortunately, however, Russia does not evoke only doting memories in me.

It was the Russian Gulag where my late grandfather, Ben-Tsion, (after whom I am named) was deported to and where he eventually perished for no crime other than being a wealthy Zionist Jew. His legacy drove me to visit Siberia in my desire to trace his last footsteps. That was a hard experience. There was no comparison between the conditions under which I visited the place and the ones he experienced. I learned about those settings through avidly reading books written by Solzhenitsyn and others, hoping to learn as much as I could about the last phases of his life. I could not even begin to fathom what he had to face in that horrible place.

It was not, though, the only visit I made to Russia. Something drew me to that place, some unexplained call from the unknown and painful parts of my Jewish being - a call to go visit that part of the world. As hard as it might be to admit, I loved every minute I spent there.

I know, some would be quick to point out all the ugly aspects of Russia, its regime, its bloody history of anti-semitism and violation of basic human rights. Despite these, I could not help but be fascinated by its wealth of culture and great contributions, Jewish and other, to world civilization.

Listening to the Red Army Choir with its perfect performance, vocal and visual, triggered a resurgence of my admiration for that culture. I was so proud when I heard the choir chant Hebrew and Yiddish songs, songs of my happy childhood in Eretz Yisrael, songs of a culture that shaped me into who I am. I was dancing in my seat to the sounds of a wonderful amalgamation of my past, present and future.

As the lump was growing in my throat and my eyes were welling up, I could not help but express a silent wish that the coming days will see a growing cultural exchange between our two countries. I was praying for the building of bridges that would melt the political barriers and divisions and help improve the lots of both the Russian and Jewish People.

I hope you will all join me in this vision and in unison say “Amen!”