I will fly home the day after tomorrow. All my love. Good night. It is already dawn here.
Yours,
Ewa
20. November 1991, Jerusalem
L
ETTER FROM
R
UVIM
L
AKHISH TO
D
ANIEL
S
TEIN
Dear Daniel,
I came a couple of times to see you at the monastery but they didn’t call you. The second time I left a note for you with my telephone number but you did not phone. Your monks are so surly that I am not convinced they passed the note on to you. Do you know that I have an extensive correspondence with those who survived in Czarna Puszcza? There are quite a few still around of those who emerged from the ghetto on 11 August 1942 and lived to see the liberation, but with every year that passes there are fewer and fewer. When I met David, who now lives in Ashkelon, we thought it would be a good idea to arrange a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the day you pulled that off. I correspond with Berl Kalmanovich in New York, Yakov Svirsky in Ohio, and a couple of other lads who were partisans.
There are very few Jews in Belorussia. I have heard there is nobody at all in Emsk, but the bones of our parents are there and of all our families. You know I have two sisters and nieces buried there. I will organize everything. You will understand that you are the main figure for us. You will sit at the head of the table and we will drink and recall all that happened.
Now, to business. Who have you met, who are you still in touch with of those who were partisans? Send me their addresses. David and I talked things over and decided people could bring their children, to show them the way we lived then. I think I shall go in advance this year to see whether there is at least a commemorative headstone. You were not from our locality and do not know what a grand Jewish cemetery there was in Emsk before the war. There were monuments of marble and granite. Has it survived? I doubt it. What the Germans did not wreck the Soviet regime will have destroyed. We will need to have a collection and erect a joint monument for all. Anyway, give me a call or write.
On behalf of the Association of Former Citizens of Emsk,
Ruvim Lakhish
21. 1984, Jerusalem
L
ETTER FROM
F
YODOR
K
RIVTSOV TO
F
ATHER
M
IKHAIL IN
T
ISHKINO
Dear Father Mikhail,
I came to give my good wishes to Mother Ioanna on her name day and she gave me a letter from you. I was delighted. She told me to write a reply.
The Lord has brought me to the kind of place I prayed for. I have found a real elder. He lives in a cave like the Syrians did. What he eats I do not know. There is a spring for water but many a young person wouldn’t have the strength to crawl up the hill to it. He goes up there with a gourd, God knows how. He washes, fills the gourd with water, and heads back down the mountain like a lizard. There is no grass there, no goutwort, or anything else, only rocks. Whether a raven brings him food or an angel feeds him I do not know. He has been living in this cave since time immemorial, a Greek told me, about 100 years. I believe it. Or are they wrong? He reads while it’s light and when it’s dark he prays. He has no bed. There is a rock shaped like a couch and he sleeps on that. For a long time he would not allow me near or speak to me. One time I brought him a flat-bread and he would not come out. I left it by the entrance to his cave. The next day I came and it wasn’t there. Had it been eaten by wild animals? He is called Abun, but that is a word which means “Father” and nobody knows his real name. Beside his cave is a small landing, a stone like a table, and he places a book on that and kneels before the book. He reads Greek. When I climb up the cliff to him, my spirit soars and this trying, inhospitable place seems to me a paradise. Father Mikhail, if he accepts me, if he allows me to live somewhere nearby, I will leave this place 100 percent because as Elder Paisiy said on Athos, one percent holds me in the world and here truly there is no percent at all. I want to stay here forever, near Abun. I have visited Mother Ioanna, now I will go to the cliff and, if he accepts me, I will remain there.
With brotherly love,
Fyodor, Slave of God
22. 1988, Jerusalem
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ETTER FROM
M
OTHER
I
OANNA TO
F
ATHER
M
IKHAIL IN
T
ISHKINO
Dear Father Mikhail,
Greetings on this holy day! You probably thought it was time to include me in the bead-roll but here I am, still alive. I was entirely ready to die, had received extreme unction, taken communion, but my new lay Sister Nadya took me to the hospital. They put me on a table, cut me with knives and took out a tumor, a very large one, but benign. I will admit to you that I felt very well after the operation. Light, and my belly was empty. It was so good.
Before, I felt a great heaviness all the time. Well, I thought, everything is in God’s hands, including the doctors, but Nadya is from a new generation, a girl with higher education and a secular upbringing. Now she has such authority over me, she is insisting I must have my cataracts removed. Next week I shall be taken to Hadassah, a hospital here, to the eye department. First one eye, then the other.
I have on my tripod the unfinished “Akathist,” with a sheet draped over it. Nadya says, “There, the Lord wants you to finish it, Mother.” For three years I have seen only a window, but what is beyond the window I cannot see. I do not know, really. By the time you receive this letter I shall either have my sight back or will remain in darkness to the end.
My dear son, I sent you my blessing, but now I am sending it once more. At my age you have to expect the end at any moment. We had Mother Vissarioniya who completely lost her wits. For two years she was able to walk at least, but completely demented. That I really can do without! I value the light of reason more highly than the light outside the window. As Pushkin wrote, “God, do not let me lose my mind, far better beg or prisoner be, far better toil or hunger see.” But that’s nonsense, too. Toil is good and a joy in itself.
If the operation succeeds I shall write to you myself, because this, as you can see, has been written by someone else’s hand. Nadya’s. The Lord be with you. My blessing to Nina and to Yekaterina, Vera and Anastasia.
Ioanna
23. 1988
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ETTER FROM
M
OTHER
I
OANNA TO
F
ATHER
M
IKHAIL IN
T
ISHKINO
My dear friend Mishenka,
I am writing this myself! The scribble is barely legible for my hand has forgotten how to write, but my eyes can see and they say that later they will make spectacles and everything will really be fine. The doctor was Russian, a cheerful man. He praised my cataract and said it came away like a sweet wrapper. He has promised to do the second operation in two months’ time.
On Sunday I went into the church and everything was shining! So much light! Everything seemed to be golden, the iconostasis, the windows. Oh, dear, how sad it was living without the sun!
How glad I am, my son, that you have an addition to your family. I know men want sons and are not too pleased when they get daughters. Well, your patience has been rewarded, you have a boy in your home. Thanks be to God! You didn’t write what name you have given him. Did you forget? Or do you want me to guess? Is it really Seraphim? In the past children were often named in honor of St. Seraphim of Sarov, but now that seems to be out of fashion. I have no time to write, the bell is ringing to call me to the liturgy.
The Lord be with you,