Our girl school had an outing on the Golan Hights. That way The Israeli Ministry of Education had decided to make "Russian" children over into one hundred percent Israelis. Me and my wife travelled together with the school. Well experienced tour guides were called into action, complete with university degrees and broad smiles. Specially fitted tour programme that included motion pictures was meant to spark off some patriotic sentiment. So the trip was over, what was told there safely forgotten, but one story remains in my memory. It haunts me no less than the account of Metzudah defenders. Because I have returned to Israel, not just came here.
War crashes into our lives and homes in an unnoticeable kind of way and always at a wrong time. All of a sudden it turns out that someone didn't have the time to write up a letter to his mother. That a bride expects over her groom in a six hours time as he hopes finally to get a long awaited "yes".
Soldiers were asleep, as young men could be following excruciating military exercises. Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement got in, a festival of fasting that brings together almost all of the Jews. There's even a sad joke, "Yom Kippur Jews". Anyways, the boys were fast asleep. Because their commanders kept saying to them that if the enemy dares to...we'll... And that the border is well guarded. And that "The Gardian of Israel doesn't sleep, nor does He drowse". Strong and reliable is battle-tried Israeli military.
The war tore up the quietude of the festival. Syrian tanks rolled into The Valley of Tears. The most advanced at the time T-55 tanks, complete with night vision gear. The latest of Soviet military hardware was always tested in real combat conditions. So the volley was set ablaze.
Khani really meant to say yes to her Beni. It's just that she wanted to lead him on a little more. She'd hate herself for that for many years to come. But in vain.
The fighting over the volley has been on for 2 days now. Less and less tanks respond to the vehicle in command. Communications with the head quarters are out. However, one thing is for sure, the reinforcement is coming. It can't be otherwise. The squad commander, Yig'al Baum receives the same response all over again to all his check-ins: "No ammunition. We're pulling back, back, back".
How difficult it is to take responsibility for someone else's life. The boys haven't lived it up yet. Some don't even know the taste of the first kiss. But what's there to do? The Syrians can't be let past - whatever the price. There comes through a unique order in the history of warfare: "All tanks follow me. The enemy doesn't realise we're disarmed".
But war is no game. You can't just bluff - lives are at stake. Ten tanks started slowly going uphill. Without firing, simply burning away the remaining fuel.
Unrestrained valour sometimes frightens more than the most heavy shelling there is. The Syrians suddenly began to retreat. By the time they figured out that the unfiring tanks aren't some kind of secret Israeli military ploy, the reinforcement moved in.
There are a lot of flowers in the Golan Hights. The flowers grown in the Volley of Tears will never wither. For the memory of the fallen soldiers cannot disappear. So forever will blossom the flowers on the ground drenched with our blood and tears.
Immediately upon my arrival into Israel and to my utter astonishment, I got a job as a chess coach in several Israeli schools. In one of them, pupils were quite grown-up. About chess they couldn't care less. There was a boy in the class who spoke Russian. He helped me interprete myself into Hebrew when necessary. However, much to my discomfiture, the headmaster would walk in wearing shorts, not to mention her rather low neckline...
In the other, things were more complicated. The kids were small and dutifully out of control. As soon as they filed into a class room, they would pair off and beat each other up. One of the girls was really extraordinary as she would smash her boy counterpart's face against her knee. When I finally managed with some effort to rescue the little brat from her hands, he broke to me: "This ain't no Russia! I'm calling the police". So I had to come up with all kinds of ploys. Buy them chewing gum. Lie to them that I was going to teach them how to play chess and then we'd all together go to America. At first, they believed me, but soon enough I had to make up new fairy tales.
One girl started nudgering me saying that my fellow teacher Gregory gave out choveret (periodicals) to the girls and that she wanted them too. I didn't know what choveret is. On the break, Gregory explained to me that he'd received old and disused chess periodicals and gave them to the kids. Those were happy, although not for long. I stayed in the school for as long as two months. Then, they sacked me, and I was actually very glad they did. They had really bled me white. And I lacked imagination either.
Soon, Aryeh Rosenberg, the man who got me that job, rung up inquiring if I was receiving the periodical of the Israeli Chess Federation. I said I wasn't. Aryeh gave me the number to call. I gathered courage and called. I must say that even if I have some command of Hebrew, it is exclusively thanks to the nerve that I have. From my first days here, I boldly went to work in the Israeli school. I was speaking Hebrew with everyone not bothering whether I was understood or not. The yeshiva staff complained I was asking them questions in an incrypted language.
So, this time round too, I dialled up and started off upbeat:
- Aryeh Rosenberg paid up. Everybody got chaverot (girlfriends) and they're using them, and I haven't got any.
No reply came.
- I can't go on without them, - I went on to make a point of just how bad it was for me without them and how much I needed them. Suddenly I heard my wife and daughter giggling. Realising I was saying something wrong, I pulled myself together quickly: "Sorry. I made a mistake, I need chaverim (mates).
Such a rapid overturn in my sexual tastes totally drove the woman at the other end into indignation:
- This is not a brothel! This is Chess Federation, mind you! Now, what do you want?
- A magazine,- I said in Russian.
- Tell me the address. We'll send you one.
Choveret I got. I prepared for the competition on behalf of the Elitzur chess society. I took the second place. Job offers from Israeli secular schools were flowing in. But by that time, I already feared "headmasters in shorts". I didn't wantsomething funny rubbing off on me. I said no. Soon I got a job offer in a Russian language religious girl school, where I have been working since. I'm fine there.
I have a task for Sunday. Madricha Leah asked me to write a speech, which I'll say during the dinner for the girls.
I wrote it already and want to share it with you:
'One Soul'
There is this story written by the brother of the chief rabbi of Georgia, Meir Levin. Story is called 'One soul' and author talks about his life, how he moved to Israel at his late forties and began studying Torah. He had a chavrusa from Chabad; so everyday he used to go to that man and learn. One day when they finished studies and Meir Levin was about to leave, the Chabad man stopped him and said: 'You are such a good learner of Torah, even though you are litvak and I'm from Chabad, I can see we have got one soul.'
After reading this story I thought a lot. Then we went to Antwerp and I had a chance to meet different people - chasids, litvaks, georgian jews who have kept their tradition for ages, and realized - no matter who we are - ashkenazi or sephard, where we are from, how educated and how wealthy we can be - we all have one soul, One Jewish Soul given by the Almighty G-d.
This is what I wrote and will read on Sunday to the midrasha girls. I hope they will like it. I changed some scenes in this story, but main idea is the same.
It's such a lovely weather in Berlin, I should get dressed and go out to take some walk. I love walking and taking pictures.
It's been almost a week since I've arrived in Berlin. It's beautiful city, people are nice, though little cold for me, but I can handle it with Hashem's help.
I've got this really nice novel by Meir Levin, brother of the chief rabbi of Georgia Ariel Levin "Tefillin". I hope you'll like it too.
"Tefillin"
By Meir Levin
Translation by Shaul Gorgel
"Every Jew has a share in the world to come"
Tractate "Sanhedrin", ch.11
This one's been my first ever written and published short story. I thought it up on Saturday. Most of the facts were a work of fiction. A year on, a woman who was born in Tbilisi (the capital city of Georgia) rang me. She thanked me, as she was weeping, and told me that she'd heard the story from her father. I must've got it all wrong: indeed her father's name was David,but the surname was Kriheli and the policeman's name was Tzeitlin. Still, I left the surname as is. After all, didn't Jews do a whole lot of good things and their names cannot be altered for this very reason.
The story I'm about to tell you took place several decades ago in one of provincial townships in Southern Russia. Its chief landmark is a factory of building blocks. Building blocks were in short supply back then. Naturally, the only hotel in town always hosted dozens of sneaky characters - supply agents, otherwise known as "go-getters". Their favourite line was "Every paper needs a pair of feet 'cos it doesn't move around on its own". That was why all the workers at the building blocks factory as well as the local railway station fed off the supply agents - cash and booze. Still more, they received handouts too. All that the former Soviet Union had to offer: caviar from the city of Astrakhan, bottles of Georgian and Armenian cognac, honey from Bashkir republic... factory workers had it all.
David Abramovitch Adjiashvili was a gifted supply man. He lost his father early in his childhood and, as a Jew, David knew that in life you get what you pay for. He never learned Russian well, even after years spent working there, but no one could handle the marketing department of the factory better than he could. When necessary, he knew how to have a drink with the right man and inquire about his wife's well being at the most appropriate time. He could also be most charming when need be. David's superiors valued him a great deal and he was becoming increasingly well-to-do. He had a good house and his daughters, Lali and Tzitzino, were "helped" into a prestigious state medical school.
The only discomfiture was that the city council had recently reshuffled, so that local police started digging. David's operations became very risky because, apart from legal supplies, he was sending to Georgia so called "hot" merchandise, simply put, stolen. He would say to himself: "this is the last time I'm doing this".
One day, as he was sending some loaded freight cars on their way, two plain clothed men approached him. They flashed their police badges and asked him to come along. He was cursing himself vigourously for agreeing to come here despite his wife's pleas not to. Yet he had no choice but to come along to the police quarters. Chances of him being released soon were not lost altogether. David knew his associates on the outside would do everything to get him out. However, what complicated the matters was that they did not know what he was arrested for.
All he had to do now was to be quiet and give up nobody. "Make like an idiot, like you do not understand a word in Russian and cry your eyes out, he repeated to himself, otherwise,the "associates" will find a way to keep his mouth shut". A rogue blade or some other "sharp tool" in a detention cell, execution at a framed escape attempt, et cetera. Besides, if nothing works, G-d forbid, the cronies will help out his family. The family was for David the holiest. For truth's sake, working as a supply agent in Russia sometimes meant he could do some "fooling around". But back in Tebilissi, he would not look at other women.
He was led into a cell. An interrogator entered. "What a thug!", thought David. The interrogator began to examine his personal articles. First thing, he brought out some kind of purse, unzipped it and then raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
-What are these boxes? - he demanded - never seen anything like this! Must be they have foreign currency or papers in them. Ivanov, - he called to a policeman - get a hammer. Let's see what those Georgian bozoes have come up with.
It must have only been this Torah ordained commandment of tefillin that still connected David with his Jewishness. His late father had given him this pair of tefillin for his Bar-Mitzva and said: "Son, put these on every morning if you want your life full of blessing". Realising that this Russian's hands would now start breaking his father's present, he leaped up and shouted out with Russian and Georgian words intermixed: "Officer, officer, I'm Jewish, this is only tefillin! I put them on every morning and I swear by Lali and Tzitzino there's nothing in it!" He forgot that the officer did not know who Lali and Tzitzino were.
-Officer, don't touch the tefillin - he was crying now, - I'll come clean on everything.
The interrogator put to the side the tefillin purse. Presently, he sat over by a typewrite and was busy typing up some kind of letter.
-Ivanov! - he called - take this letter to the district prosecutor, at once.
Having waited till Ivanov left, the interrogator opened up a cell door and let David out. He said to him: "If you don't come back in two hours, I'll be in a big trouble".
David flagged down a cab and he was in a suite with his friends in twenty minutes.
-How much did you pay them? - the friends asked David.
He did not reply. Immediately, people were dispatched to the factory and the train station. There, they used the information obtained from David to fix all the paperwork necessary. The "hot" cargo turned "cool". David was back in his cell on time. The following morning he was set free and even received an apology. In one month, David returned to town, sought out the interrogator and brought him gifts: wine, cash and even some diamonds. However,the interrogater refused to accept any of them.
-You see, he said, I'm not clean. Sometimes I helped people out and took gifts for that, but this time round it was a whole different thing. I didn't do it just for you. I did it for a Jew,because you're Jewish. And now you should leave".
Soon afterwards, David and his wife left for Israel. There, he would tell his friends this story pointing out: "Listen, still I don't get it why he never took the cash. Must be them Russian Jews real righteous men!".
I wish I could round up this story on a brighter note, that David's children or grand children are all learning in the Yeshiva, and are married to the interrogator's children and grand children, and that the wedding was joyful and all felt good and happy. But in real life things aren't that simple, and I don't know how everything ended up. Too bad I'm not a prophet and I can't finish this story with an exclamation: "The chief police interrogator, comrade Rabinovitch and David Adjiashvili have a share in the world to come".
