The Gates of November

by Chaim Potok

  For the Jews in Moscow there were more schools, more synagogues. And summer camps and seminaries. Volodya met with old friends, told them that he saw no future for Jews in Russia. First get them out, he insisted; then strengthen their identity.

  On the final day of the conference, he addressed the crowd—about three hundred delegates from Europe, Canada, Israel—at the Sabbath morning service in the Moscow synagogue across the street from the school he had attended as a child.

  He had no opportunity on that trip to visit the apartment, but he telephoned the family to give them his good wishes. The young woman answered. How good it was to hear from him! Yes, they were all well. Except for her paternal grandmother’s sister, the Jewish sister: She had died.

  Volodya expressed his sorrow, offered his condolences. They talked for a while longer, and Volodya said good-bye and hung up. It was not lost on him that there were no more Jews left in the apartment on Gorky Street.

  Bibliography

  Anyone familiar with this subject will recognize the debt I owe to those listed here. I want to acknowledge with special appreciation the work of Richard Pipes, Leonard Schapiro, Zvi Gitelman, Nora Levin, Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Alan Bullock, Robert Conquest, Walter Laqueur, Arkady Vaks berg, and James H. Billington. Their writings were both loran and theodolite to my stumblings and constructions.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAIM POTOK, trained as a rabbi and an editor, became an international success with his beloved first novel, The Chosen, and over the following thirty-odd years gave us many other memorable works, both fiction and nonfiction. He died in 2002 at age 73.

  A Fawcett Book

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1996 by Chaim Potok, Leonid Slepak, Vladimir Slepak, Maria Slepak, and Alexander Slepak

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-90648

  eISBN: 978-0-307-57551-7

  This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

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