Is there an edition which consists of separate booklets? I would like to have the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in that form. Of course cassettes would be ideal but to tell you the truth I would prefer them in Polish. I cannot say that I understand spoken English well. This is made worse by the fact that my hearing is getting worse and my sight is also not getting any better but you know dear Agnessa I have never before in my life felt such a renewal of life as now. I really have been born again!
There is one question which is troubling me. God gives me so much and I cannot do anything now other than thank him with all my heart and all of you my true family. I would also like to participate in the life of the Church but my pension is very small. The trouble is that I refused to accept money from Germany. I did not take the compensation they paid out after the war to prisoners of the ghetto and even less did I want to have a pension from them. No money can compensate for the lives of the people they killed. The Germans pay money to those who by a miracle survived but that miracle was by the hand of the Lord and not of the German government. I disapprove of people who take that money it is blood money. As a result from my modest pension I have 200 shekels a month for my personal needs. It is not a lot but I spend money on the little silly things I need sometimes on books and all I can donate is five shekels a week which makes 20 a month. I very much regret it but I really can’t afford more. Of course I could get money from Ewa but in the first place I do not want anything from her and in the second place it would not even be my donation but hers.
32. 1970, Haifa
L
ETTER FROM
D
ANIEL
S
TEIN TO HIS NIECE
, R
UTH
Dear Ruth,
I’m not just writing to you for no reason but because of a conversation I had yesterday with your parents. It was your mother’s birthday and I went to wish her many happy returns. Almost the only thing they talked about was you. You were absolutely the focus of attention. Even not so much you as your departure to the theater school. There was a great deal of noise because two extreme views on the acting profession came into collision. Your father, as you can imagine, was badmouthing actors because they don’t do anything useful and went so far as to say that your mother, looking after poultry on a farm, had done more for mankind than the actor Gregory Peck. I don’t know why he so disapproves of Gregory Peck. Milka threw up her hands, chuckled, and announced that she would be very glad to change places with Gregory Peck. Then Milka’s friend Zosia chimed in to say that all through her youth she had dreams of being an actress. Before the war she had been invited to join a theater company but her father had not allowed it, and you, Ruth, would have a great acting career because in your school play you had acted the part of Esther better than any of the others. Zosia’s husband, Ruvim, told us what a bad end his cousin had come to, who once had happened to be in a film and then spent the rest of her life trying to be in another and not succeeding, as a result of which she lost her mind and drowned herself. Then people told a number of other instructive stories and I also offered my tuppence’ worth telling them about a man I met in Kraków called Karol Wojtyła who was an actor and playwright in his younger years before becoming a monk and making a great career for himself. He is now a bishop in Poland. Ruvim said in some irritation that if Karol Wojtyła had been a good actor he would not have had to become a monk because that was no less mad than what his cousin had done.
I thought that a little provocative but said nothing. I claimed my own justification was that at least I had never had any artistic gifts but at this there was an even greater uproar. They decided that actually I had great acting ability because I had spent so much time in the service of the Germans and had played an uncongenial role so well that it saved my own life and the lives of many others. Suddenly everybody made peace and your artistic destiny ceased to seem so hopeless because it will give you an opportunity of resolving life’s problems not headlong but in some devious artistic way. Ultimately, it was a good party.
For myself, I am very glad that you passed your exam and are learning a profession. Write when you start, I will be glad to hear your news. Your last letter made me very happy. France is a beautiful country and it is great good fortune that you will live there for some years, learn to speak French perfectly, see the life of Europe, and return home with new experiences. I am particularly glad that you will speak French fluently. I know quite a few different languages, but have to admit I speak all of them badly. I cannot read Shakespeare in English, Molière in French, or Tolstoy in Russian. I’m sure that each new language expands a person’s mind and his world. It is like another eye and another ear. A new profession also expands a person, even the profession of a cobbler, as I know from my own life. Work hard, my child, do not be lazy. Be an actress. When I see a large poster by the bus station with your sweet, funny little face on it, I shall be very happy! Let’s have an actress in our family, too!
Love from
Daniel
33. 1981, Kfar Saba
L
ETTER FROM
T
ERESA TO
V
ALENTINA
F
ERDINANDOVNA
Dear Valentina Ferdinandovna,
A rare opportunity has arisen to send you a letter which will not be opened and pried into. It will be brought to you by a woman you know following a very complicated route. She will tell you all about it.
Gradually we are beginning to get used to the colossal change in our life which has occurred and to our new circumstances. The most extraordinary thing is that the temptations have almost left me. It has become easier for me to pray, and my awakenings in the night which were previously such torment now pour out into warm prayer. Sometimes, when Efim hears I have got out of bed, he joins me, and this shared prayer gives both of us great solace. I will not conceal from you that from the very first step, we have encountered major problems here for which we were ill-prepared.
We began our life in Israel with a deception. On our arrival Efim, filling in the immigration form, wrote in the box for faith, “Atheist.” After some hesitation, I followed his example. In the papers we are recorded as a married couple and I did not want to create additional difficulties for him and concealed my faith, not for my own benefit but for his. We were settled in an ulpan, a language school with a hostel, to study the language and adapt. Actually, we could have avoided that because Efim knows Hebrew well, but his knowledge is book learning and not the language people speak. It is not so easy to understand the spoken language. For my part, I am entirely innocent of knowledge. I do not know a single word. We live in Kfar Saba in a tiny flat, two rooms, luckily, so each of us has their own cell and, after my communal neighbors, I feel happy here.
Every free day we take the bus completely at random, and sometimes go on trips with tour guides, some of them even free. It is very difficult to get to a church service. Sunday here is a working day so I have only been to the evening service in Jaffa twice. Of course, on our very first trip to Jerusalem we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and climbed the Mount of Olives. I have to admit that at the gate of the Church of Mary Magdalene I felt very upset. It belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. As members of the Russian Orthodox Church, admission is denied us. That is, we can go in and look around, of course, but there is no liturgical communion between these two churches. Everywhere there is division and strife, even here, especially here. My heart is not yet reconciled to the loss, but my path to the Catholics is now also closed. Efim told me to leave the solution to the Lord. In our peculiar situation we really have no choice.