Efim says there are great riches to be found in the Orthodox service, but I do not find it easy to access. In the Moscow Mission we are not welcomed, the Church Abroad are friendlier, but it is up to Efim to decide about that. And also Him above. I have to make the bitter admission that I do not feel I belong anywhere. I am neither a Catholic nor an Orthodox. I am in some ill-defined place which is completely unfamiliar.
My love to you, dear Valentina. I ask to be remembered in your prayers.
Always thinking of you,
Teresa
40. 1982, Haifa
C
ONVERSATION
B
ETWEEN
D
ANIEL AND
E
FIM
D
OVITAS
DANIEL: How do they say it in Russian, we are to some degree compatriots: zemeltsy? zemlyaki?
EFIM: Zemlyaki. Yes, Lithuania and Poland are close. Do you miss Poland?
DANIEL: I love Poland, but I do not miss it. How about you?
EFIM: What I miss most here is Orthodoxy. I do not find it here, but this is where I belong.
DANIEL: You are a Jew. What is Orthodoxy to you?
EFIM: I have spent ten years in the Church. I love Orthodoxy. I am a priest. It is the Church that does not want me.
DANIEL: Here there are a score of Orthodox churches and an equal number of Catholic. There are a hundred Protestant. You can choose. It’s a big bazaar.
EFIM: I did not know what awaited me here. Real Orthodoxy is what I am seeking!
DANIEL: Look, authentic what are you seeking? Why are you not looking for Christ? He is here, in this land! Why should we seek him in church doctrines which appeared one thousand years after His death? Look for Him here! Look for Him in the Gospels.
EFIM: That is true, but I have found Him deep within Orthodoxy, in the church service which I so love. I meet Him in the liturgy.
DANIEL: You are right. You are right. Forgive my presumption. This is probably my Achilles heel. The trouble is that I have spent half my life among people seeking the Lord in books and rituals which they themselves thought up. In fact, you can meet Him anywhere, in Orthodoxy, in the liturgy, on a river bank, in a hospital, or in a cowshed. The closest place to find Him, though, is in your soul.
EFIM: Yes, yes, Father Daniel, of course. Spiritual life is simply a search for the Lord in the depths of one’s soul.
DANIEL: Oh dear, oh dear! Spiritual life is the very thing that makes me nervous. This spiritual life is what, in my experience, more often than not becomes an end in itself, as an exercise. How many small people I have met with big spiritual lives, and almost always it transpires that for them spiritual life is no more than digging around in themselves at a very superficial level. And everybody is looking for a spiritual mentor!
EFIM: Yes, that really is a problem. No matter whether spiritual life is superficial or profound, a father confessor is essential. Since I left Vilnius I have lacked a confessor to talk to, and I feel that loss. A confessor is indispensable.
DANIEL: Fine, fine … Forgive me, my premise is always that we need only one Master, so tell me, what is a father confessor?
EFIM: What? Someone who guides the spiritual life, so that what you mentioned doesn’t come about: digging around in yourself, introspection.
DANIEL: Are you sure you can tell where spiritual life ends and practical life begins?
EFIM: No.
DANIEL: Good, then tell me what is troubling you more than anything else? What is your greatest concern?
EFIM: Teresa.
DANIEL: Your wife?
EFIM: We have a spiritual union.
DANIEL: I have always thought that any marriage is a spiritual union.
EFIM: We live as brother and sister.
DANIEL: Together? You live together as brother and sister? What are you, saints?
EFIM: No. Only our temptations are like those of the saints. For years Teresa has been suffering from terrible visitations, but I cannot talk to you about that. For the past year I have felt this dreadful presence myself.
DANIEL: Enough, enough! Don’t tell me anything about it! I am not a father confessor! My brother always says I am an ordinary social worker, only unpaid. So, you are married, you live in the same apartment, and you do not sleep in the same bed?
EFIM: We decided on that from the outset. Teresa was expelled from a convent. She was in despair. I, meanwhile, could not be taken on by a monastery or ordained because I was not married. That was the quandary we faced. We got married so I could get ordained.
DANIEL: Then you have a fictitious marriage! What do you need such complications for? Go and sleep with your wife! How old are you?
EFIM: Forty-one.
DANIEL: And Teresa?
EFIM: Forty-one.
DANIEL: Well, get a move on! Women pass the age of childbearing when they get older. Go and have children and you won’t have any spiritual problems.
EFIM: I do not understand. You, a monk, are saying such things to me?
DANIEL: Well, what of the fact that I’m a monk? It’s my affair that I’m a monk. Life was given to me, and I vowed to give mine. That’s all. But you are a Jew, and the Jews have never known monasticism. Even in the Essenes’ community there were married people, they were not all unmarried. The Syrians and Greeks dreamed up monasticism. They invented all sorts of things which have no relevance to us. Go to your wife. You need a father confessor? You need somebody to take decisions for you? Right. I’ll do it! Go and sleep with your wife …
41. 1983, Kfar Saba
L
ETTER FROM
T
ERESA TO
V
ALENTINA
F
ERDINANDOVNA
Dear Valentina,
Your letters give me great succor and the last one, where you write about your trip to Lithuania, to Pater S., filled me with sadness. How much I have lost, but what a lot I have gained! I cannot say that my present life is worse or better than my past life, but the changes are so profound that there is no comparing them. At last a number of like thinkers have appeared around us among the parishioners of Brother Daniel. Of course it is not what we were used to at home. Here everything is far more diverse, including the people. They come from different countries and towns, and even speak Russian in different ways.
Efim is still lonely, but when there are the two of us, loneliness is not so hard. We are both suffering from the disorder in the Church. We are not fully satisfied with what we have now. Efim goes to the Russian Church Abroad. His relations with the ‘red’ Church have not worked out at all. Sometimes we visit the Catholics, the highly individual parish of Father Daniel who celebrates the Catholic Mass in Hebrew. I have made some progress in Hebrew now, I can talk a little. There is, however, no one I can talk to about the most important and private things. It is only with you that I can discuss my personal life.
Dear Valentina, you were married for 20 years and took vows after the death of your husband. That is the best thing a widow can do. We have a different experience, but you will understand me better than anybody else because you know both states: that of a married woman and that of a nun. Although, of course, covert monasticism, monasticism in the world, has its peculiarities, many who have been chastened by experience consider it the more difficult path. Your life seems to me an example of womanly service: getting married, being a faithful wife, giving birth to a child, becoming a widow, and taking vows.
Your translations too of the Gospel texts into modern Russian, revealing new meanings and nuances, which you undertake solely at the command of your heart, is not this true monastic service? As regards to myself, I see nothing in my time in the convent beyond a feat of discipline. The spiritual growth which is the whole purpose of monasticism did not occur. I venture even to think that my spiritual life has become richer since I left, and the sufferings associated with that have been a separate school of learning.