“Chavala, don’t be taken in by the Turks. Even if Aaron were to come back they would still hang me. At least I can die knowing I’ve betrayed no one. I want our son to know and never forget that I had something to do with the miracle that has happened to our people here. Just know that I love you, dearest Chavala. I have since the day I first knew you …”
How long ago, he now wondered, had it been since he’d seen Chavala and said those words? He had no idea. He had no idea what day or what date it was. The beatings had stopped, and now they were using starvation as their last resort. Well, it would soon be over, he almost looked forward to the day of his execution. He only hoped he would have the strength to go to the gallows saying the words, Netzah Yisroel Lo Yshaker, Israel’s eternity shall not die. And then call out, “Long live NILI!”
Dovid could not know that the British—thanks in part to the information he had furnished—had broken through the Turkish lines, demolishing them, and had dug in. The decisive offensive of the Allies began, and within two weeks the whole of northern Palestine was taken from the Turks.
The prisons were emptied …
When the iron door of Dovid’s cell was opened by a soldier in khaki shorts, he thought his mind was playing games with him. He was sure he was hallucinating as he lay in the corner of his cell… staring, afraid to move.
But the soldier, fantasy or not, came to his side and helped him up. Dovid braced himself unsteadily against the wall.
“It’s all over, mate, you walk out any time you like. Good luck, I’d say we got here just in time.”
Still unable to take it in, Dovid managed to get out, “What happened?”
“It’s all over, chum, we beat them proper.”
Dovid slid down the cold stone wall. He finally knew that he was alive … and would be going home to Chavala …
The litterbearers came for him.
“All right, old chap, we’re going to have you attended to right away. From the looks of it, you haven’t had a decent meal in a century or so.”
Dovid could still not believe it, he’d lived in darkness and fear for so long he was suspicious even now … “Where are you taking me?”
“Just lay back, we’ll have you good as new in no time. You’ll like the hospital we’re taking you to—”
“How long do you think I’ll have to be there?”
“Oh, maybe three to four weeks.”
“What day is this?”
“It’s Armistice Day, November 11, and in case you’re confused about the year, it’s 1918.”
Chavala was holding a basket of wash in her hands when she looked down the road and saw a man approaching.
The change in Dovid would have made him unrecognizable to anyone else, but she knew … Dropping the basket, she ran to him, and without a word they fell into each other’s arms.
That night, as she lay beside her husband, she thought her heart would break when she touched the once strong limbs that were now almost fleshless. She held him to her. She would nurse him back to health. To life.
All at once the world had changed. The fighting men of Zion had returned, and a miracle of miracles to Chavala, Moishe, gone so long she had been afraid it would be forever, came home a week later. But in his eyes were the scars of battle, and with them a new bitterness, so foreign to the exuberant Moishe whom she had always known and who had gone off to war with such high spirits and optimism.
When she tried to talk to him about it, he at first only shook his head and said nothing. It was not that he’d found out that Aaron had been in London and not come to see him. He had been upset about that for a while, but later he understood that Aaron had had no opportunity to see him, that he’d had word that he was recovering from his wounds and had the priority of contact with the British for all their sakes. No, it was something more subtle, and more difficult to express or even fully understand. He was a young man grown old too quickly. He had been as dedicated to and sure of their mission as Dovid, but he was too young to sustain that feeling in the face of the violence and death … He was a romantic, and like most romantics he was more easily hurt by the ugliness of the way men could treat each other. He wasn’t really a hater. He couldn’t accept the awfulness of the way the Turks and Germans and Arabs had treated the Jews. And especially the British, he had seen how they had mistreated the Jewish soldiers like himself who were, after all, on their side. Who then was left? Where? He remembered his sister Chavala’s talk about America. Could it be there … ?
Dvora’s husband Ari had come back, but Sheine had gone to Berlin.
The war had taken its toll on all of them, Chavala thought, but thank God they were alive…
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE BRITISH WOULD BE given the mandate through the League of Nations to protect Palestine, and the Yishuv felt for the first time that they were in the hands of a friend. They had fought with the British, had died for the British, and now would be rewarded by them. The dream was to get on with the building of their lives, in peace.
The grand dream was short-lived. Under the British, the Jews found the restrictions almost as difficult as under the Turks. They were not the cruel overlords that the Turks had been, but the restrictions were nearly as severe. It seemed, in fact, that the British favored the Arabs, and looked the other way at Arab attacks on the Jews. Worse … Jews were still not permitted to carry arms, Arabs were.
The Mufti, Haj Amin el Husseini, had been appointed to rule Jerusalem, next only to Mecca and Medina in importance as a holy Moslem city. He had been appointed on the pretext of restraining a religious war as he propagandized that the Jews were going to desecrate the holy shrines in old Jerusalem.
Jewish lives were once again in constant jeopardy.
When Moishe came home one night from being beaten up in an Arab ambush, Chavala made up her mind. This time she would not be put off…
“Dovid, we’ve waited a long, long time. The war is over. Remember, we have those jewels. It’s time, Dovid … we’re going to America. This is a country of barbarians, I won’t live here any longer. There’s no reason for any of us to. You’ve made your sacrifice … we all have …”
“After all we’ve been through, Chavala, in your heart, can you really abandon the dream of Eretz Yisroel that, as you say, we all sacrificed for?”
“Yes. Dovid, what will we do here? Live on a kibbutz? Zichron Yaakov no longer exists for me. I still hear the wailing, the screaming … there’s the smell of death here. Where will we go?”
“I can get a job with the Zionist Agency, the need to work for our people is even greater …”
“The need … it will be here for a thousand years, with us or without us. I can’t give my life to a hopeless dream any longer. No. And you must not either. Come to America, where we can live like human beings, with our family.”
Dovid sat there, his face buried in his hands. The moment had come, there was no putting it or her off any longer … But there had to be a reason they had survived, and in his heart he knew … as he had always known … he could not abandon this land. Yet how could he give up Chavala? She too was his life…
Chavala looked at him, knowing the struggle going on inside him. Finally she said quietly, “Dovid, we’ve done it your way. At least give mine a chance … try, Dovid … for all our sakes.”
“What would I do in America?”
“I don’t know, but let us at least try.”
He looked closely at his wife. “Chavala, I said it in jail, I’ve said it to myself every day I’ve known you. I love you. You are my wife. I want us to spend the rest of our life together. But I can’t live with you if I can’t live with myself. I have to stay. Tell me, Chavala, what’s right?”
“I wish I knew, Dovid. I love you too, you know that… but I cannot stay here. If I did, I would soon be a woman you would not want as your wife. Maybe we are both chasing after dreams that can never come true … who knows, maybe the dream I have now will not be what I want. Only time will work that
out. But we both must have the chance to find out.”
Moishe spoke up. “I feel the way Chavala does, Dovid. We’ve talked about it, I want to go with her … I’m sorry …”
Dovid sighed, nodded. For a moment he wondered if he could bring himself to leave, but he knew in his heart that in the end the differences between them would tear them apart.
There was nothing left to say.
“When will you leave?”
“As soon as I can, it’s the best way …” She went to him, held him close. “We’ve been through hell together, you and I, but this is the worst of all. I love you, Dovid, with all my heart, my soul. I only pray that what we do will somehow justify what we are giving up.”
Dvora, Raizel and their husbands had come to wish Chavala, Moishe, Reuven and Chia a safe journey. Each wondered if he or she would see one another again. America and Eretz Yisroel were so far apart. The sisters cried, then walked away, leaving Chavala and Dovid alone.
Chavala clung to Dovid, and he to her. “I’ll write,” she said, then forced a smile … “and please don’t be afraid to change your mind.” The smile vanished. “And if you need me, Dovid, I’ll come back.”
If he needed her? I need you now, Chavala. Now.
For a moment she wanted to change her mind, to say, My place is with you Dovid. I’m willing to forget what I want, what I deeply believe is best for our family. You’re my husband.
But then the boarding call came.
They looked at each other and kissed, and then she turned and walked up the gangway to join Moishe, Chia and Reuven. She stood at the rail, watched Dovid below. He looked up at her. They did not take their eyes from each other.
Now the ship was moving out into the harbor, farther and farther … until Chavala, his beloved son, Chia and Moishe were finally lost to view. Lost … ?
Dovid turned and walked quickly away.
America 1920
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ON THE DAY CHAVALA and her family arrived New York had its worst blizzard in ten years.
She was totally unprepared. As they stood freezing in their thin clothes Chavala’s mind shifted back. If they’d survived the winters in Russia, survived the pogroms, survived the brutality of the war, then, by God, they would survive this. Unless they froze to death first…
Quickly she gathered the children together and they trudged ankle-deep in the snow down Delancey Street until they found a delicatessen. With chattering teeth they seated themselves at a table.
Chia and Reuven could not stop trembling. They had never experienced such penetrating cold.
In Yiddish Mrs. Neusbaum asked, “Nu, so what would you like?”
Reuven looked at his mother. He had never heard this strange-sounding tongue. In Hebrew he said, “What did she say?”
Chavala answered back, “The lady would like to know what we want to eat.”
This was a frightening and strange world. It was not at all what his mother had told him to expect. He was even more confused and upset than the day he’d left his father standing on the dock in Jaffa. He looked around at the hanging salamis and the glass counters filled with slabs of corned beef, smoked salmon, barrels of herring, dill pickles. Bagels and rye bread and rolls were stacked on the counter. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry. “I don’t want anything.”
Chavala too well understood what was bothering him. This was not, after all, Palestine. It was not home … everything was so foreign to him. No matter how she had tried to explain the reasons she had left his father, nothing would appease him. But, she told herself, he was still a little boy, one day he would understand that it was only here she would be able to secure their lives. Where they could find their lives … What did a child know about building a future free from hunger and poverty, and death … ? One day, though, he would understand … she devoutly hoped …
“Nu…?” said the rotund Mrs. Neusbaum.
Chavala said to the family in Hebrew, “I’ll order, you’ll like it.” To Mrs. Neusbaum in Yiddish she then said, “Well have the dinner.”
“Barley soup or noodle?”
Reuven watched the fat lady’s lips move.
“The noodle, and the roast chicken.”
“For the appetizer, gefilte fish or chopped liver?”
“The chopped liver … is that all right with you, Moishe?”
“Only if it’s like mama used to make.” He smiled.
Reuven was shocked that his uncle Moishe could also speak this strange-sounding language. He sat back awkwardly and observed the small plate of liver with a crater of chicken shmaltz in the center of the mound, with the smell of dill pickles and green tomatoes.
He tasted a spoonful of the soup and let it grow cold.
Chavala noticed and did not urge him. He didn’t even try the chicken, the kugel or the tzimmes that lay on the heavy white plate. Well, he would get used to the food, as he would everything else … New beginnings, always the most difficult … But for a moment she recalled her own discontent in Galilee, and then pushed aside the comparisons. The past, it seemed, never let one rest…
In Hebrew Moishe said, “I haven’t had such a good old-fashioned meal since … well, since you and I were children.”
“You like it, Chia?”
“It was fine, I just wish we could get warm.”
All Reuven heard Chia say was that she liked the food. At this moment he wasn’t too fond of her. If she gave their mother the impression she was pleased with everything then he wouldn’t have an ally. He knew if Chia and he didn’t stand shoulder to shoulder his protests alone would never get ema to return to Palestine. Yes … he was terribly annoyed with Chia, not to mention his mother and his uncle.
After they had finished eating Chavala told Mrs. Neusbaum, “We just arrived, maybe you could tell us where to stay?”
Reuven felt as though he were on an island listening to his mother and the fat lady speaking.
“Where are you from?” Mrs. Neusbaum asked, wiping her hand on the white apron.
“Palestine.”
The woman sighed. “When we left Russia, that’s where I wanted to go, to Eretz Yisroel, but my husband thought different, so we’re here in the goldeneh medina. A groisse glick.”
Life was strange, thought Chavala, just the reverse of Do-vid and her, except Mrs. Neusbaum didn’t leave her husband … enough, already, with the guilt…
“You didn’t miss so much. It’s better here.” As though she could tell. But Chavala remembered the echoes of the terrifying sounds that came from Turkish beatings … the awful fear … “Now tell me … where is there a place we can stay?”
“Three blocks from here Mrs. Zuckerman has a rooming house. Here, I’ll write down the address.” Chavala said, “This is very kind of you, Mrs. …”
“Neusbaum…”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Neusbaum, and again, thank you.”
“What’s to thank? Listen, I was in the same boat once.”
Chavala smiled, then said to the family, “You wait here, I’ll go take a look.”
Although Mrs. Neusbaum could not speak Hebrew, still, she knew enough from the Bible to catch a word. “It’s a nice clean place, take my word.”
“I’m sure, but you’re sure she has a room?”
“She’ll make a room.”
“Come, well go then,” Chavala said to the family, and to Mrs. Neusbaum, “how much do I owe you?”
Her fingers added up the amount, and then she deducted ten percent. As Chavala took out the money she glanced at Reuven. He still hadn’t eaten a thing. “Maybe I should buy a little something to nosh on later … give me four Strudel and a dozen cookies.”
With the bag in her hand she said, “Shalom.”
Lovely sounding word, thought Mrs. Neusbaum. “Shalom to you too, and come back …”
Mrs. Zuckerman had only one room in the attic. It was cold and the snow came in between the eaves from the shingles that had blown off the roof. But Chavala told herself that for a night
they could put up with it. Be grateful for it … she told herself, for a night they could put up with it.
Chavala asked Mrs. Zuckerman if maybe she had a little heater? No, Mrs. Zuckerman was sorry but that she didn’t have. “That’s all right. Maybe you can bring a few extra blankets?”
“That I got.”
“Thank you, and if you have some newspapers we can use it to keep out of the snow.”
Sure, the Yiddish Forward, she had plenty of old copies.
From Mrs. Zuckerman’s basement Moishe brought up two extra cots and an orange crate to stand on while plugging up the hole in the ceiling.
Chavala was now ready to assess the day. It had been a very big beginning. They all undressed under the covers and slipped into their night clothes.
Moishe was instantly asleep, as was Chia, but Chavala lay in the dark waiting to hear Reuven’s even breathing. What she heard was the munching of cookies and Strudel. She smiled. He had deliberately not eaten and now, of course, was famished. Moishe as a little boy for some reason had also refused to eat, she remembered … what had mama said or done that seemed so important at the time? Chavala couldn’t recall, but children, she knew, punished their mothers by not eating … at least until the stomach took over. She heard the soft crunch again and almost laughed out loud. If Reuven had known she deliberately left the bag at the side of his bed he most certainly would not have touched its contents.
Mrs. Zuckerman and Mrs. Neusbaum were Chavala’s Baedeker to America.
America the Beautiful was not quite the Utopia Chavala had envisioned. What she found was a three-room flat on the fifth floor in an old tenement building on Ludlow Street. The paint was chipped and pitted from twenty years of wear. The plaster that had fallen from the ceiling exposed the lath. The linoleum was patched in a dozen different places and a dozen different colors, not exactly a lovely mosaic. The rooms were dark and looked out to the crumbling building next door. In the alley below she could smell the fermenting garbage coming from the overflowing cans. The porcelain in the sink had worn away and the communal bathroom was down the hall.
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