The Sisters of the Winter Wood

by Rena Rossner

  Mami leaps into his arms. She kisses him fiercely and I can do nothing else but grin from ear to ear. I am proud of my parents. Of who they are and what I know they can become—for us and for each other. I am proud of my sister, a glorious swan who may have saved us all, who did what she needed to do most in our time of great need—she brought the swans. And I am proud of Dubossary, of the fierce Jews that surround me. My heart feels like it will burst.

  When Tati puts Mami down, I see that there are tears on his cheeks too.

  He looks at me and at Laya. He puts his hands out for us. They are giant hands, great big bear hands. I place my hand in his and when I look up, I see the Rebbe in him for the first time. Here, in this room, he is brave and wise, a king among men, and I am filled with pride.

  “I claim you both as my daughters,” he says, even as he hears the rustling of feathers from above. “It does not matter who else claims you.” He shoots a look up at the loft. “You come from royal lines, holy lines, and you both have the power and the privilege to lead us all. I trust that as my daughters you will make me proud. You already have.” He goes down on one knee and bows his head to us.

  Dmitry comes down the ladder. Tears streak his face. He picks the feather cloak up from the ground and places it around Mami’s shoulders. “Adel, please keep this. You do my brother honor; you do us all honor. Please accept my apology on behalf of all of us.” He bows his head to her. “Ever shall you fly with the sun on your neck, and your face lifted to the sky. The swans will always come when you call.”

  Laya looks up to the loft and her eyes meet Sasha’s. He comes down the ladder.

  “Tati, Mami, I have something to tell you,” she says.

  Sasha stands by her side and Laya takes his hand. She looks at him and he smiles back at her. They look right together, like Laya finally belongs somewhere.

  “Sasha has flown to America. He says that it is a wide open land. There are cities there where Jews can live freely. All kinds of Jews. He says that he can take me there. And when I get there, I can send for you.” She looks around the room at Alter, Ruven, and Dovid. “All of you.”

  Sasha speaks, his voice is clear and strong: “I have always loved Laya. I have dreamt of her since the day I was born. And I’ve been watching her. She and I have met now a few times.” He smiles at Laya and she nods back. “But Laya had some things that she needed to do before she could find herself. I know that you don’t know me, but some things are destined by the stars. I will take care of your daughter. I will protect her. And she speaks true—we will fly far away from here, but then we will bring you all home.”

  Tati’s eyes sparkle with tears. He sighs. “Laya, you don’t need me to tell you that this was not the match that I would have chosen for you. But nothing that happened in the past few weeks is what I would have chosen. How can I condemn you to a life of fear, a life of suffering, especially when I see how quickly everything you know can be taken from you in a puff of smoke and ash. Go, dochka, my shayna maydele. Go to the goldene medina. We will join you there if the Aybishter wills it. There is nothing left for the Jews here in Dubossary.”

  Laya looks at me. I look back at her, and we smile.

  Tati gives us a great big bear hug, one like only the Berre Rebbe can give. Tears sparkle on his beard, and I know that if I tasted them, they would taste bittersweet, like goblin fruit.

  I look over and see that Ruven is awake, his head is off his pillow, and he is watching everything unfold. He smiles too.

  The world feels big and wide and full of possibility.

  I take Laya’s hand and squeeze it, and she squeezes back.

  Author’s Note

  On March 20, 1903, the body of a young Christian Ukrainian boy named Mikhail Rybachenko was found drained of blood in the garden of a Jewish man named Yossl Filler in the shtetl of Dubossary, on the border between the Ukraine and Moldova. As the London Jewish Chronicle said then, the boy was found “there in a fruit garden close to the river.” A similar story also happened in a nearby Jewish hospital: a young non-Jewish girl was found poisoned (by suicide) there and the Jews were blamed. This quickly turned into a blood libel (a false accusation that the Jews used the blood of non-Jews to bake Passover matza) and the non-Jewish anti-Semitic newspapers of the day called for a pogrom (a violent riot with intent to massacre a certain ethnic or religious group) against the Jews. The Jews of Dubossary organized themselves into a self-defense corps and they fought back and prevented a pogrom from happening in the town.

  But Jews in the nearby shtetls in the Kishinev area suffered: about fifty were killed, a hundred were severely wounded and five hundred were slightly injured, seven hundred houses were destroyed, and six hundred stores were pillaged. And from then on, the pogroms continued in many other towns. Between 1881 and 1920, there were over 1,300 pogroms in the Ukraine.

  As a result of the pogrom in Dubossary, my great-uncle, Abraham Krovetz, made his way to America via Ellis Island in 1905. From there he was able to bring almost his entire family over to America to join him, including my grandfather, his brother, Joseph Krovetz. My family also made their way from the nearby town of Kupel to the USA at around the same time.

  On September 3, 1940 the Nazis came to Dubossary. Again the Jews of Dubossary tried to fight back. This time, they were not successful. The Nazis rounded up six hundred Jews and put them in the main synagogue in the town and then burnt it to the ground. They led the remaining 6,000 Jews of the town to the nearby woods where they shot them all and buried them in a mass grave. Every family member of mine who did not make it to America from 1903 to 1912 was slaughtered by the Nazis in 1940, together with the rest of the Jews of the town. Only 100 to 150 Jews from Dubossary survived.

  Dubossary was really the first attempt at a pogrom in 1903 from what I can tell, but the stories I drew upon—of the herring barrel, and people going missing, people being killed in the town of Gomel—these were all things that happened. According to the annals of history, they happened in 1903, but mostly after what happened in the town of Dubossary. Any inconsistencies and fallacies are my mistakes, and though much of the story of the town of Dubossary and the people in it is based on stories I heard and read, I took great license with the truth and made it my own. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance of any of my characters to anyone living or dead is non-intentional.

  The original idea for this story came to me because I wanted to write a retelling of Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market. I loved that it was a tale of sisterly love, and that both sisters, in their own ways, try to save each other. As I started to tell the tale, I did research into my own heritage, into the Chassidic stories that I was raised on and into some Ukrainian, Moldavian, Russian, and Romanian folktales.

  The “Shpoler Zeiyde” tale is a well-known one. His last name was Leib and he was from the town of Shpole in the Ukraine. He was a Chassid and a follower of the Rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov. As the tale goes, he danced in a bearskin to save another Jew. Many Jews, including one of my grandfather’s relatives, used the name “Dov” which means bear, or “Dov-Ber.”

  The bear is also the national symbol of Russia and there are many Russian folktales about bear-men and bear-women—the tale of Morozko, the Slavic God Veles (Volos) who is Lord of the Forest and his animal form is a bear—all of these influences shaped my creation of Berman Leib and his clan.

  Russian and Ukrainian folklore is full of swan-maiden and swan-prince myths and I drew inspiration from them, as well as from perhaps the most iconic swan myth—Leda and the Swan. One fairy tale, “The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” was an inspiration for my book. Many of these swan tales are written as part of byliny—Russian epic ballads loosely based on historical fact and greatly embellished with fantasy. I also drew upon a few more byliny, but most notably the story of “Danilo the Luckless” and the character Sadko (which is actually a Jewish name—Zadok) in the Novgorod Cycle. Sadko is also an opera written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. “Danilo the Luckless” (the
inspiration for the name Danilovich in my tale) was written by Aleksandr Nikolaevich Afanas’ev, who is often referred to as the Russian Brothers Grimm. Danilo’s wife is a swan bestowed upon Danilo by a water monster. This swan-maiden can make magical things happen with the flutter of her wings and the shake of her head. The first serious collection of byliny was collected in mid 1700s by Kirsha Danilov (another inspiration for Danilovich).

  Mikhailo Potyk is another example of a bylina that features a swan-woman, and in this tale a swan-maiden makes a wedding agreement with her husband that they will be buried together. This connected me back to the Dubossary cemetery and the well-known grave of the bride and groom there.

  “Leda and the Swan” is a tale from Greek mythology in which Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces and/or rapes Leda who then bears Helen and Polydeuces. She also gives birth to Castor and Clytemnestra (children of her husband Tundareus)—and her daughter Clytemnestra is traumatized by what the swan did to her mother.

  I was also very much inspired by Terri Windling’s fairy tale series: I remember the books being published in the 1990s when I was a teen and I eagerly awaited every installment. I must mention Patricia C. Wrede’s Snow White and Rose Red, the tale of two sisters in the woods who are kind to a bear that eventually turns into a prince, and Jane Yolen’s Holocaust retelling of Briar Rose. I must also give a nod to Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated for his richly nuanced depiction of shtetl life and for telling the tale of what it was like to go back and look for his family’s town (like so many towns in the Ukraine)—of which nothing remains. Margo Lanagan’s The Brides of Rollrock Island was also an inspiration—it is a tale of sea-brides/selkies who get trapped in human form by their husbands who steal their seal cloaks/skins. Katherine Catmull’s Summer and Bird features a mother who leaves her swan cloak behind and two sisters who set out to find their parents, and I was also inspired by her book. After my story was already written, Naomi Novik’s Uprooted came out and when I read it I said, “Oh … so this is part of my story too.”

  I was inspired by the sensuality of these tales and also the sensuality of Goblin Market, and was determined to write something that contained this element. As a great lover of fantasy and history, I have also always been seeking a way to combine the two and to delve more into my own Russian/Romanian/Moldavian/Ukrainian heritage. I grew up hearing my grandparents speak Yiddish, but especially my grandmother, Nettie Bunder. As I looked for words to use to bring Yiddish back to life in my tale, I started to hear my grandmother’s voice and many of the words I wanted to use popped into my head before the internet completed its search for the terms. Though my parents and grandparents were all born in America, I feel these bloody roots of my past in my bones and I know that the reason that I am here today has only to do with the decisions made by a handful of brave relatives of mine over a hundred years ago to leave Dubossary and Kupel and Kiev and Riga and Bender and to make their way to America.

  Glossary

  Note on pronunciation

  A lot of the Hebrew words that were used in this time period would have been pronounced with a Yiddish accent as opposed to the proper Hebrew pronunciation. That type of pronunciation, though, is still quite popular even among non-Yiddish speakers, especially in Orthodox Ashkenazi circles in the USA, Israel, and around the world.

  In terms of the Yiddish turns of phrase and pronunciation, I followed the way I remember my grandmother speaking it, with her intonation. Her family was from Romania, but she was born in the USA, so her Yiddish may either be what she learned from her parents, or a mix of both Yiddish from her parents and the Yiddish she likely heard around her growing up. Because many Hebrew words are also used in Yiddish, one could arguably dispute that some of the Hebrew words also belong in the Yiddish words list (and vice versa). I tried to be as comprehensive as possible.

  Note that the sound represented by “ch” in the Hebrew and Yiddish phrases is pronounced as a throaty “h,” such as that found in “loch.”

  Hebrew words

  acher—other

  am segula—the cherished/chosen people

  Am Yisroel—the People of Israel

  asur—forbidden

  ayshes chayil—“a woman of valor”; also a song sung on the sabbath

  baruch atah Adonai eloheinu melech haolam—blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe

  baruch dayan ha’emet—blessed is the true judge

  bat kol—echo

  bat melech—daughter of a king; good girl

  be’ezras Hashem—with God’s help

  brocha—blessing

  challah(s)—traditional bread for the sabbath and high holy days

  chas v’shalom—God forbid

  chassid(im)—a sect of Jewish mystics, founded in Poland in the 1700s

  cheder—religious school that starts at age three

  Chovevei Zion—an organization founded in response to the pogroms to promote Jewish immigration to Palestine

  chuppah—canopy under which a Jewish couple is wed

  daled amos—a measurement used in the Talmud (about seven feet)

  Eloykim—God

  Eretz Yisroel—the Land of Israel

  Hashem—God

  Hashem yishmor—God preserve us

  havdallah—“separation” a ceremony that marks the end of the sabbath and holidays

  kaddish—mourner’s prayer

  kahal—community

  kehilla—congregation

  kiddush—sanctification/blessing over wine

  malka—queen

  mamzer—bastard

  matza—unleavened flatbread eaten on Passover

  Midrash—Biblical commentary on the Bible (at times, folkloric in nature)

  melaveh malka—escorting the sabbath queen; a Saturday night festive meal

  meshugge—crazy

  meshuggene—crazy person

  mezuzah—parchment contained in a decorative case, traditionally hung on a doorpost

  minyan—quorum of ten men for prayers

  motzei shabbes—Saturday night

  motzi—the blessing made over bread

  niftar—passed away

  niggunim—melodies

  oylam—world

  oymen—amen

  Ribbono Shel Oylam—God (master of the universe)

  sakanas nefashos—life-threatening

  sforim—holy books

  shabbes—the sabbath

  shalom aleichem—peace be unto you, or hello; also a song sung on the sabbath

  shalos seudos—the third meal on the sabbath

  shekhted—slaughtered

  Shema/Shema Yisroel—the “Hear O Israel” prayer said before bed

  shidduch—arranged marriage

  shiva—seven; the seven days of Jewish mourning

  shomrim—guards

  shtuss—nonsense

  Talmud—a central text of rabbinic Judaism

  Torah—the bible

  tsuris—troubles

  tzitzes—fringes that religious men wear

  ye’varech’echa Adonai ve’yish’merecha—may God bless you and keep you

  ze seudas Dovid malka meshicha—this is the feast of David, King Messiah

  zichrono livracha—may his/her memory be for a blessing

  zmiros—songs

  Yiddish words, phrases and sayings

  a bi gezunt—as long as you’re well (don’t worry so much)

  a broch tzu dir!—a curse on you!

  a dank—thank you

  a ritch in kop—crazy in the head

  a shaynem dank!—thank you very much!

  alter kocker—old man

  arein!—come in!

  aroisgevorfen—a waste

  Aybishter—God

  babka—yeast dough pastry, usually made with chocolate or cinnamon

  bahalterlekh—hide and seek

  bekishe—black coat

  beshert—destiny or soulmate

  bissl—a little bit

&nb
sp; blech—hotplate

  borsht—beet soup

  bubbemeisses—old wives tales; foolishness

  chap nit!—don’t grab/not so fast!

  cholent—meat stew left overnight on a low flame to be eaten on Saturday afternoon because of the prohibition against cooking on the sabbath

  danken Got—thank God

  davens—prays

  deigeh nisht!—don’t worry!

  der emess iz der bester lign—truth is the safest lie

  es iz nit dayn gesheft—none of your business

  es tut mir bahng—I’m sorry (it sorrows me)

  ess gezunt—eat in good health

  essen—eat

  eyn, tsvei, drei, lozer lokser-lay—a counting game with nonsensical rhymes

  fantazyor—fantasizer, dreamer

  farklempt—emotional, choked up

  farschnickered—drunk

  fluden—layered pastry

  gelibteh—beloved

  genug iz genug!—enough is enough!

  goldene medina—the golden country, America

  Gott in himmel!—God in heaven

  goy(im)—non-Jew(s)

  goyishe—non-Jewish

  gribenes—crisp chicken or goose skin cracklings with fried onions

  gut morgen—good morning

  gut shabbes—good sabbath

  heldish—brave

  husht!—shush!

  ich hob dir!—drop dead!

  ich hob dir lieb—I love you

  kapelye—ensemble, group of klezmer musicians

  kashrus—kosher standards

  ketzele—kitten

  klezmer—traditional Eastern European (Ashkenazic) Jewish folk music

  kneidlach—dumplings made from matzo (matzo balls)

  kugel—baked pudding or casserole, generally made from noodles or potatoes

  kuppel—skullcap

  lekach—Jewish honey cake

  lokshen—noodles

  mamaloshen—mother tongue (Yiddish)

  mandelbrot—Eastern European Jewish cookie baked in a loaf, then sliced thin and baked again

  mandlen—soup nuts/flour dumplings

  maydele—sweetheart/little girl