Don’t be sad, Mama. Concentrate on Svetlana. My dear sister will give you plenty to worry about and have lots of baby goyim whose noses you can wipe. I have nothing against Seryozha, but Svetlana always finds “non-standard solutions.” She should have married a nice Jewish boy and we could all have emigrated together but no, she had to marry a Cossack. I don’t understand why she spent so many years trying to emigrate and then got stuck in such a banal manner “at the prompting of her heart”! That’s it! The plane is coming in to land! Through the window I can see the Mediterranean and the coast of Israel.
1977, Hebron
F
ROM A LETTER FROM
G
ERSHON TO
Z
INAIDA
S
HIMES
… can’t compare it with any anything else. Of course, it is a mobile home not a real house but it is fair enough for the home of a Jew to be a tent, a tabernacle or a shelter. We live like the settlers of the early 20th century, except that where they had rifles we have machine guns. Ever since I landed at Ben Gurion Airport I have been feeling a little drunk. For now there are five of us men, four women, and a child. The man without a woman is, of course, me. Only it’s not because I have a hellish personality, as you have always been telling me. It’s just that I suggested to the girl I brought here that she should leave. At least now I know exactly the kind of woman I do not want by my side, but the kind I do need I have yet to find. In general I like Israeli women very much. The ones I met while I was in the ulpan learning Hebrew were very strong and independent. Admittedly it was mostly Russians there (they call Jews from Russia “Russians” here). Only the teachers were Israeli. I like the Russians here very much, too, but you meet such beauties among the local girls they take your breath away. What would you say if I married a Hebrew girl who couldn’t speak a word of Russian? We work, we stand guard, and we sleep in turn. We have a tractor we bought with a bank loan. It is six kilometers to Hebron, but the road is not safe. It passes an Arab village. Something you will find interesting is that the Cave of Makhpelah where all the patriarchs, Abraham and the others, are buried is near here. It didn’t make a great impression on me, but the others were in raptures. To tell the truth, I have no time left for raptures. There is a lot of work. I remember sewing mittens in the camp. What a nightmare! At that time I could not imagine that all those samizdat Jewish magazines, Hebrew language circles, and Jewish discussions in kitchens would lead to a real life like this. The people are mixed. Among the settlers there are religious and non-religious Jews, like us. The local rabbi from Hebron visited us recently. He is very famous, and right wing. Incidentally, it is very interesting. In Russia I was considered practically a Trotskyite in our circles, very far-left, but here I am considered to be on the right. In Israel there’s no telling your left from your right!
I used to not have much time for the lads who wore skullcaps, but here they are splendid, sturdy boys and very jolly, especially the rabbis.
INSCRIPTION ON A PHOTOGRAPH: Our women prepare for the Sabbath. You can see part of the laid table.
1978, Hebron
F
ROM A LETTER FROM
G
ERSHON TO
Z
INAIDA
S
HIMES
… came over to me. He looked a hundred years old, but his mind was completely clear. He asked whether my ancestors might have been from Nikolayevo. I said yes. Then he asked whether I might be a relative of David Shimes. I said yes, he was my grandfather. At this the old gentleman gave a little wail of delight. “Oy, weh! He was my best friend!” I said, “Don’t be upset, but he got shot in the 1930s.” “That,” he said, “is really no surprise. All his brothers and sisters were shot and poisoned, too.”
“Perhaps those were not his brothers and sisters, but somebody else’s,” I said. “My grandfather did not have any brothers or sisters because he was born in shame. His mother bore him out of wedlock, and in a good Jewish family that was a great scandal. My grandfather’s mother, my great-grandmother, contracted tuberculosis because of a nervous disorder and was sent to Switzerland for treatment, where she died.”
“Entirely so,” said that frail old man. “The father of your great-grandmother was a grain merchant, and there has never been a poor grain merchant since the world began. It was he who sent Rakhil to the sanatorium, to escape the disgrace. But everybody in the town knew which revolutionary had given her the baby. Entirely so. David was brought up by two maiden aunts. We were in the same class at grammar school, and he was the only friend I had in the whole of my childhood. In 1918 my father brought me to Palestine and I have lived here ever since. It was only after the war that I read Stalin had managed to murder the father of my friend David even though he was in Mexico. Stalin murdered all of David’s brothers and sisters who were born legitimately, too. I read a big book about it. It’s all described there.”
I was simply astounded, Mother. How come this old stranger knows more about our ancestors than we do ourselves? Or did you know but concealed it from your children? In short, when this old man mentioned Mexico, I realized who he was talking about.
Perhaps in his old age he is confusing everything, but if this is true, it is a complete kick in the back for me. Knowing how cautious you are, write back just one word, “ice-pick,” and I will take that as full confirmation. To tell the truth I just can’t believe it!
Ma! I remember now why I am writing to you. I have gotten married. My wife is an American Jewish girl. You will like her very much. Her name is Debbie, Deborah. When I have photographs I’ll send them.
So long,
Gershon
1981, Hebron
F
ROM A LETTER FROM
G
ERSHON TO
Z
INAIDA
S
HIMES
… Why are you so surprised? It is iron logic. In the early 20th century all nonbelieving Jews rushed to support the revolution because socialism was a very seductive idea and I understand my ancestor very well. He was an idealist. They were all idealists, only first they had no luck with socialism and then they did no better with internationalism. It all fell through. The next step was for new idealists to immigrate to build socialism in one country, Israel. That’s what we have now. What is more, it was all non-religious lads again, because the believers had a religious idea: we already have our Holy Land. It was the non-religious men who came to the Holy Land to build socialism, and I am one of them! I do not like capitalism, I like socialism, only not the kind we had in the USSR.
You are surprised I am living on something like a collective farm, but it is my collective farm, a kibbutz, and I like it. I have an even bigger surprise for you. I did not write about it before, but now I don’t think you will be surprised by anything I do. When Binyomin was born I was circumcised at the same time as him. I won’t discuss the reasons I did that with you, but I am sure I did the right thing.
I am glad my wife supports me. So there, I have become a Jew at 30 years of age, together with my firstborn. Deborah will be having another baby soon, another boy I hope. She promised me to have as many babies as she has strength for, and she is a very strong and sturdy woman in every respect.
I have never referred again to your refusal to immigrate to Israel because of Svetlana’s idiotic marriage, but now you write that relations between her and her husband are terrible and that they are practically at each other’s throats. Perhaps we should look at that again. Let her divorce her Cossack, take her daughter, and I will send you all an invitation. Nowadays it is all much simpler than it was five years ago. I am quite sure that if my father were alive, he would have brought you here in 1976. You will always think I killed him with my samizdat and prison sentence and that his heart failure was my fault. Perhaps you are right, but do you really not understand that even if I had not been so determined to emigrate then, I would still have come into conflict with the regime over something else? Think about my suggestion. I am quite sure father would have sided with me.