After that, nothing changes on the outside, but everything feels different when we see each other at school. Now I see that his jokes and comments, as several of us stand together talking, are directed at me. I would never say that I become bold with him, but I certainly relax around him and am able to enjoy the attention that I’ve never before even let myself notice.
Our common dedication to Zionism gives us more opportunities to be in each other’s company. These days, everyone belongs to a youth group, but there are striking ideological differences among us. Like every Zionist youth group, Hanoar Hatzioni believes that the only way to keep Jewish culture alive in the world is to create a Jewish state in Palestine. But it rejects all political ideologies as divisive. Sala, Rozia, and I feel we have outgrown it and want just the opposite. We want a higher purpose to believe in, a cause that would benefit not just Jews but all of mankind.
Along with Heniek and Srulek and many of our friends, we join Hashomer Hatsair (the Youth Guard), a left-wing Zionist organization named after a group formed in Palestine in 1909. Itka is in a religious group called Bet Yaakov. There is another group, called Betar, the youth organization of the right-wing Jabotinsky Revisionists, but we think their ideas are too radical. Our group is committed to creating a Jewish state in Palestine peacefully, buying up land bit by bit, and establishing a socialist society. But the Revisionists mock us for thinking you can buy a country. They believe the way to reclaim Eretz Yisrael—the Holy Land—is to fight for it. Then you can worry about how to run it.
Hashomer Hatsair is much more fun than Hanoar Hatzioni was. At least twice a week we meet at the Maccabee Sports Club, a large building with many halls for the meetings of different Zionist groups. There is a huge backyard where we learn to dance and sing Israeli songs.
Soon after joining, I am chosen as leader of my own kvuca, a group of seven girls, all about four years younger than I. In our meetings, we are given discussion assignments: the history of Zionism, the history and traditions of Eretz Yisrael. Often our leaders will call a meeting of all the groups, boys and girls together.
At some point I am chosen to deliver a speech to the entire group on the origins of Zionism. I am terrified as I picture myself speaking with so many eyes on me. And, to make it worse, Heniek will be there.
How I research and study for that speech, spending long hours in the library poring over old dusty books written in Hebrew, chewing the erasers off my pencils, and my fingernails as well!
On the day of my speech I can’t eat a thing. I am shaking inside and out. I pray that I won’t make a fool of myself; that people will think my ideas are intelligent and interesting; that my voice won’t quake. I decide to wear my favorite outfit, a blue silk skirt and the same blue sweater Heniek had admired me wearing. But still I am so self-conscious about how I look. It is winter, and although I have put Nivea cream on my nose every day, it is still as red as borscht. I know it is a sin, but I put Coty powder on my nose to hide the redness. I try to do it discreetly. It is okay for Hela to use powder because she is older, but it is not okay for me. Anyway, she has left her powder on her table near our bed and I use it.
As I walk to the podium, I am grateful that my long blue skirt hides my knees because they are knocking together as I start to speak. But once I begin I settle down. I get caught up in the ideas and beliefs that mean so much to me and I actually enjoy myself.
When the meeting is over, a lot of the members gather around me and are very enthusiastic in congratulating me. I am a bit embarrassed by all the compliments but privately quite pleased. And then Heniek tells me that my speech was perfect! I don’t have any idea what I say to him, but I do know how dry my mouth feels, how sweaty my hands are, and how happy I am.
After that Heniek is more direct in seeking me out. We spend more and more time together. While before we were together mostly as part of a small group of friends, over the next two weeks we start being with each other, just the two of us, talking after meetings, walking home from school, and taking evening strolls around the main square. I can hardly concentrate on my schoolwork. All I think about is when we will be together again. And then one evening, as he walks me home, he declares his feelings for me. I tell him I feel the same way, and we are officially in love.
(They call us the Golden Couple, and little do I know that these will be the happiest years of my life.)
* * *
Even though I study such long hours and so hard that my vision blurs and my head spins, my life is charged with meaning and purpose and dreams. I am in love and smart and a leader and admired by my peers.
After rushing to finish my homework, twice a week I go to Hashomer Hatsair meetings where Heniek and I can see each other, and the rest of the time we go out walking. On those nights I turn off the light in my bedroom as a sign that my homework is finished. Heniek is waiting on the street for me, watching my window. When the light goes off he knows that I will soon be downstairs. We walk a few blocks to go strolling in the Bernardynski Garden and Plac Czarnieckiego. A lot of people are there, Poles and Jews alike. We call it our shpetzia, our promenade. It is so romantic to go walking with Heniek, arm in arm, joking and laughing, meeting our friends and looking at the old people gossiping on the park benches.
The passionate commitment to Zionism that Heniek and I share adds fuel to our romance. Often on our walks we carry little blue cans with a small slot on top and ask people to donate a few coins for the pioneers struggling to eke out a living as they devote themselves to building Eretz Yisrael. The can is called a puszka. Most Jews have one. As long as I can remember, Mama has kept a can for the Jewish orphanage on the kitchen windowsill. Giving money to others less fortunate is one of the 613 mitzvot Jews must perform, and we are glad to be working for a cause we care about so deeply. We are bursting with vitality, imagining a future bright with possibilities. Whatever our choices, they will be in the service of our dream to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
When it grows colder, Heniek comes to visit at my house. Sometimes we sit in the parlor and I help him with his class in mathematical discussion. He is so bright and good in school and has planned to be a lawyer from the time he was a little boy. But his mind is just not as quick in math as mine. Because I’ve always looked up to him for how smart and knowledgeable he is, I am grateful for this chance to earn his respect.
Hela often has her friends over at the same time, meeting in our dining room. Sometimes it is just her boyfriend, Jacob Brem, but often it is his weekly card game with his best friend, Leon Reichmann, and some of the others from their right-wing Zionist youth group, Betar. Of course Heniek and I have nothing to do with them. Besides being about five years older than we are, they have political views that are the opposite of ours and we have nothing in common. They really seem to know how to have fun, though. I don’t understand how they can be so playful and lighthearted, cracking jokes and teasing each other, and at the same time believe in a branch of Zionism that promotes violence as the means to create a Jewish state.
Hela has our maid, Janova, bring them dish after dish of food that Hela has set aside from our family meals. I think this is terribly selfish and wrong. And besides that, I am embarrassed in front of Heniek.
Heniek’s father works for the Community Council; he is not paid very well and the Wajshofs don’t have a lot of money. I don’t want Heniek to see such extravagance. I am afraid that he might feel uncomfortable seeing how well off we are, and I get really angry at Hela for putting me in this awkward position. Except for buying us tickets to the latest Hollywood picture at Flattau’s Movie Theater, Heniek doesn’t need money for our dates, nor do we have time for much else beyond the demands of school and Hashomer Hatsair. Plus, I don’t want to cater to Heniek like Hela serves Jacob. Our relationship is built on total equality.
* * *
One of the highlights of our Zionist meetings is when a man named David Ben-Gurion comes to speak to all the different organizations. He was born in Poland but lives i
n Palestine, where he heads the trade union he founded to organize Jewish workers in Palestine. We are told that in 1909 he organized Hashomer (the Guild of Watchmen) as a self-defense organization for the Jews in Palestine and we are thrilled to meet him, especially because our group was named after his group. Members of some of the other groups, like Betar and Bet Yaakov, are not as excited or honored by Ben-Gurion’s visit.
This short, sturdy, middle-aged man with thick dark eyebrows and lots of bushy white hair in an electrified circle around his head eloquently talks about the socialism and equality and happiness in Israel. He tells us we must all work very hard to buy back the land and we must go there to be farmers like our ancestors, to be pioneers for Zion.
Suddenly the mood changes. An older leader of the far-right Jabotinsky Revisionists starts heckling Ben-Gurion, shouting loudly that Ben-Gurion and his ilk are cowards and Communists and that we Jews must take the land back by force, as it was taken from our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago. Then the Jabotinsky leader’s cohorts, including the younger members of Betar, join in, jeering and yelling at Ben-Gurion. I see Jews from my town whom I vaguely know, right-wingers like Leon Reichmann and his cousin Henry Marton, Sabina Markowitz, Sala Jacobowitz, and others, jumping up and rudely screaming. Soon some of our members from Hashomer Hatsair join in and start shouting back. And then suddenly the older Jabotinsky leader strikes one of the men, yelling at him. That man hits back, and in no time at all fists are flying. Even Heniek and Srulek jump into this enormous brawl. It shocks and saddens me that we Zionists, we Jews, would fight each other with such anger and hatred. (I would never imagine that in the future destiny will intertwine our lives with such love.)
* * *
I know there is a passionate rivalry among the different Zionist factions, but I have little interest in any of that. For me Zionism means camaraderie, devotion to a shared cause, and enthusiastic, high-spirited fun. During the summers that I am fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, our Hashomer Hatsair group goes away to camp for two weeks. We ride in carriages pulled by horses and stay in little houses in the country. Heniek and the other boys are in one house, Sala, Rozia, and I, and the rest of the girls in another. We are all given jobs to do.
My first job is to make the morning coffee for everyone. I have never had to cook in my life. All I know about coffee is that it needs to be dark. Because of the Depression, people try to economize wherever they can, and real coffee is stretched by mixing it with the ground roots of a more readily available plant called chicory. But I don’t know that. So I grind up a lot of beans—a lot—which makes the coffee not only very dark but also so bitter and vile that no one can drink it and we have to throw it away. I am mortified and think that Heniek will never want to marry me because I am such a bad cook.
At summer camp we talk a lot about Zionism and Israel and sing Hebrew songs and dance Israeli dances. We also play little games. One day we girls are sitting in a circle, and the game is to write anonymous notes to each other. I receive a note that says, Don’t bother with Heniek. He will drop you. He will break your heart.
This “warning” infuriates me. People hear rumors and take as fact what they wish to believe. But I know that Heniek loves me and will stay with me, and that the girl who wrote the note is probably just jealous. I never play that game again.
At camp and at our twice-weekly meetings during the school year, we have doctors and lawyers and professors come to our groups and talk with great fervor about Zionism. To live in Israel is to achieve the pinnacle of happiness and to fulfill our Jewish destiny. The speeches are enthralling, painting a picture of the glorious lives we will create in Israel. It will be a socialist country where everyone will be equal and we will all take care of one another in peace and freedom. Israel will be a country where we Jews will no longer be persecuted. When anti-Semites scream, “Go back to your own country,” we will actually have a country to go back to. We will live our lives together with one communal purpose. We will at last return to the land of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Though we Jews had been farmers and shepherds for centuries, now many parts of Europe have laws preventing us from owning land. As a result most of us live in the big cities and villages and have forgotten our roots; we have forgotten how to love the land.
One of the lecturers keeps talking about Israel as so perfect, so pure, such an ideal climate that I am unable to stop myself. “Poland has great beauty, too,” I blurt out.
He is furious with me. I wonder why he has to make Israel such a utopia. What faults is he hiding from us? Are our leaders whitewashing any flaws from the image they are creating for us, even at the cost of the truth?
Some of my friends go to Israel to study. They are so excited, thinking it will be all they want or need in life, but many come back disappointed. They report that life there is primitive and hard. I start to question much of what we’ve been told and encouraged to believe. I even wonder if Hashomer Hatsair is intentionally trying to indoctrinate us with propaganda, fearing that an honest portrayal of life in Palestine would discourage us from going there as pioneers.
It becomes clear that life on a kibbutz, an agricultural commune where everyone lives and works together in true equality, means abandoning our personal ambitions and desires and obeying the values and dreams and orders and rules set by others. Of course, since the time I was four and walked out of kindergarten, I’ve known I wasn’t very good at passively submitting to any situation that made no sense to me.
Slowly, painfully, I come to understand that I can never go to Israel to live on a kibbutz where I would have to subjugate myself to an outside authority with the power to dictate my work, my hours. I need the freedom to choose my own course in life.
I fear Herzl’s words that I “shall live at last as free,” which I had memorized, are not the personal reality that awaits me.
Heniek and I spend many hours privately grappling with our doubts while publicly continuing in our leadership positions. Finally, when I am eighteen, after much soul-searching, and even though I am the secretary of the group, I leave the organization that I have loved as a part of my very being and that has provided such meaning and pleasure and direction throughout my teenage years.
The Rabbi
Once there was a gentile who came before the sage Hillel and said to him: “Convert me to Judaism on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Hillel converted him, saying: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation. Go and learn.”
—Hillel the Elder (110 BCE–10 CE)
1934–1935
Poland is recovering from the Great Depression, but painfully slowly. Like all the others, my family is having a hard time financially. Mama and Papa decide to open another butcher store, this time for gentiles. My parents realize that they don’t need to sell the back half of their perfectly good meat to the gentile butchers at wholesale just because those cuts aren’t kosher. Why not just open a second store and sell those non-kosher parts directly to the gentile customers? After all, they are also some of the more choice cuts of meat. This turns out to be a good idea, and the new butcher store is quickly successful.
Soon after that Mama decides we can earn more profit from our kosher stock by making and selling delicatessen meats. There is only one kosher delicatessen in Piotrków. It is owned by Pan Korman, and it is on the other side of town. A small store space has just become available on the ground floor of our building. Mama hires a gentile man and teaches him how to make kosher salamis from the end pieces of the kosher meat. How I love the delicious smells and tastes of those deli meats. I bring them to school with me and look forward to our snack break all morning.
But Pan Korman, obviously, does not want the competition. He is a very influential Hasid who gives a lot of money to the religious community, so he and his business friends go to the rabbis to protest. Even though Mama strictly follows all the laws of kashruth in preparing the meats, th
e rabbis refuse to certify them kosher. We have no choice but to close the shop. Mama and Tatte are so disappointed to lose the new business. I am disappointed to lose all that delicious food. We are all angry at the unfairness of the decision.
We also can no longer afford two live-in maids. Since Krysia’s parents are old and sick, she decides to go back to her village. It seems very strange not to have her in my life anymore. I have known her since I was born.
Early in 1934 we hear that Piotrków will be getting a new chief rabbi. Mama decides we can economize by renting our own large, beautiful apartment to the rabbi’s family and moving into the Nissensons’ smaller apartment across the hall.
In September, just before the High Holidays, we move into Rozia’s apartment. I feel guilty that we are making the Nissensons move out and that my best friend won’t be across the hall anymore. Also, I am sorry to lose our balconies, where I love to sunbathe and watch the lively street scene below. I have to content myself with the view of the backyard and the gazebo and my dear old apple tree. Fortunately, the outhouse is not part of the view.
Soon after we move out of our apartment, my sister Hela and Jacob get married and move to the little apartment down the hall from us on the other side of the staircase. I am happy for Hela because she is so much in love with Jacob, and it looks like they will have a very nice life together. Jacob’s father has an extremely successful business—a small factory in town that produces ready-made clothes for the Polish people living in the villages. (The people in town who can afford better don’t buy ready-made clothes. Like us, they all go to tailors.) Jacob works with his father. He is in charge of sending salesmen to the countryside to sell the clothes to the peasants.
I am happy that Hela and Jacob are living in the little apartment for another reason. Now I will have my own bed and room. But I am the happiest of all because the crazy man who was living in Hela’s new apartment is forced to move out. Pan Herszkowicz had lived in that apartment since I was a little child and he used to terrorize me with his howling. At any time of the day or night he might start screaming out that he was “the King.” Sometimes, when I would come home from school, the whole hallway would be completely pasted over with black paper. My parents told me he was harmless, but if that was true, why did Pan Herszkowicz’s mother and wife leave cooked food in front of his door, knock loudly, and then quickly run away? They would never go into his apartment or even wait for him to open the door.
Claiming My Place Page 6
