TO AMERICA AND BACK
novel by
Mordechai Landsberg
Copyright © 2012 by Mordechai Landsberg
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
For the expected emigration of his family from Israel to America, Solomon Kaplasky hired a private English teacher. His wife Ramona and his son Nahumik agreed to learn the language together. To Solomon himself - English was quite familiar, as he had taken courses in Berlitz a few years before. The teacher was the retired chief clerk of the post office in the small Israeli town, where they were living. His name was Mr. Traub, and he began to visit Kaplansky’s flat in the evenings and study with the mother and son “Reader 1” elemenatry book. He also bought for them the book: ‘English Through Pictures’(Washington Square Publishing)- which had been then a best seller.
The dilligent boy Nahumik soon discovered, that it would not be too difficult for him to remember by heart the most necessary elementary words. His mother, Ramona, joined him in those lessons. She advanced better than him, knowing some English before, having had taken a course in Prague University, more than ten years before…After six months of study, Ramona had become impatient to remain in any more in Israel. So she told to her husband Solomon, that whatever they had learned till than – had been enough: It was time to sail to the land of unlimited possibilities, United Staes.
Less than a year had passed since Israel War of Independence. The feet of the photographer, his wife and two sons – Nahumik and Danny, were uprooted from the streets of their town and from the land of Israel. On board the ship that took the family abroad - only the boy Nahumik really hated the sudden change his soul and in his surrounding. But he had known that nothing could be done against the bitter reality. Better he should try to forget, better look at the blue foaming sea and look curiously at the passengers and discern the sailors’ many types of efforts.
Solomon Kaplansky had an acquaintant in U.S., who became for him like his ship’s anchor. The man was an artist- painter and Theater Set Manager, who had emigrated from Israel to Los Angeles a few years before, and became a quite known in the studios. In those days it was a common phenomenon, that children and elders would write to the studios – with which actors’ and actresses’ and other professionals had been connected to – and Public Relations offices were trying to promote their films and artists’ careers as well: They would mail to fans and films’ lovers all over the world - autographs and even letters of thanks, originally handwritten by the worshipped artists. The Cinema newspapers and magazines were used to publish the addresses of studios, and sometimes list the also the names of the most important stuff members of movie productions at that particular time...
Maybe by that way Solomon Kaplansky discovered the studio address, where his friend was employed. He wrote to Theodor Farbstein (so Nahumik remembered years afterwards)‘A Letter of help request’, and in good English. In that he was helped by The Municipality’s Architect Reu-el Hoffman, who was living not far away. This man had been working long years with the the British Authorities in Palestine, and was familiar with five languages: In addition to Hebrew - he spoke French, English, Russian and Yiddish. He liked the idea of people who would love to leave Israel, for ideological as well as personal reasons: he hated wars, like Solomon himself. In his talks with the phoptographer- he would sneer, mocking about the new reality in the State of Israel of that time: “Receiving a million of immigrants, refugees from eastern Europe and the Arab countries- would cause a destruction of the economical and social life here. Had I a gun,” he would declare to Solomon, “I would have killed the irresponsible hazrdous zionist leaders here…”
Solomon wrote to his friend Farbstein in LA about his son’s –Elkano- death in the war. He described the very hard impact of the disaster on him, that had brought him a heart failure. Now having recoverd – he continued - he would simply like to get out and free himself and his family from bearing the dark atmosphere, from an everlasting recall of his bereavement in that cursed land. He should simply try to forget his sad past in the so called Jewish Land. . .Then he explained his decision to study the ‘Future of Professional Photographing’ envisaged in the art of Movies. And as he, Solomon, was having a long experience in ‘regular conventional photography’, he would succeed there by hard studying. In short, he will be thankful if Farbstein could be helpful to him – at least in the first days, showing him where to lay on – his own head, and his family members’ heads as well.
Farbstein found for Kaplansky’s family a modest apartment in an old suburb, not far from the place that he had been dwelling, close to Hollywood. We don’t know if it had been close to Primrose avenue(maybe once Nahumik mentioned that name) or another place, maybe near Franklin avenue of today. The actor himself guided Solomon where he could find a course for film photographing, even for film production: It had been opened then, and was not expensive. The English that Kaplansky had studied in Palestine, at time of the British Mandate, was not enough for understanding thoroughly all the lectures and practices in the said course. But Solomon understood the ‘main points’, as he told Ramona. He began to feel that he would be able to stand sound on the ground in the new country, with its ‘unlimited possibilities.’ He was so satisfied of himself toward the end of the course, that he decided that it had been enough to study (he finished the Course but had not received a Diplom or Certificate). He should open a photography store business, and make a living for his family. The cinematic Big Dream may be postponed, for the time being…
At that time Solomon found an Immigration Agent, who advised him that he should hold a certain Certificate in order to maintain a resident status; otherwise he might be removed out of United States. Nahumik was still a boy then, eleven years old. But when he became a teenager – he knew that his parents had already held such certificates: They were allowed to work in their store without fear. He assumed that as an expert in faking all kinds of ducuments- it was not difficult for Solomon to organize something regarding that document (it has been called later ‘the Green Card’).
Nahumik’s move to American school daily life was not easy at all. He could not adapt nor accommodate himself swiftly to the change in thye new surrounding, having arrived from an Israeli school, in which he studied till then - to a foreign country’s suburban Elementary School. His emotional and mental big trouble(as he remembered it years after all had happened) came out mainly from his un-forgiving, pedant and narrrow minded English teacher. She seemed to ignore his foreign origin and frequently mocked at his strange dialect and mumblings, while he would search what English words to use, while asked to answer a question that she had raised in class. His humiliation was obvious to all the pupils present in the class. His English vocabulary was really very dull. While the other pupils were reading a story very quickly, and proved a well understanding some of Mark Twain’s book, Nahumik could hardly understand its plot. When he was requested by his teacher to describe Huckleberry Fin’s looking, for example, he could hardly say: “the boy pants were …” and then stopped talking. His teacher turned to another boy, and after he said “Huck’s pants were torn,” and another said: “he was shabby dressed,” - the cruel teacher chuckled, and rebuked the new comer, Nahumik. She declared: “I have to talk with your mother about your poor knowledge of our language. Not only in speaking, but regarding every aspect of words and grammer - all in all…”
No pupil in the class understood the precise meaning of ‘aspect’- ‘but sometime teachers talk in order to make his sentences complicated’, thought Nahumik, ‘by that showing their deeep knowledge and superiority over us, the children.’
On the first “parents’ winter meeting evening” with the ‘educating teacher’, Ramona heard Mrs.
Betty Smartpool saying: “This pupil has a very poor oral language. If he continues to disregard his spelling mistakes and not pay attention to what each word means- he will fail in his year-end exams. He’ll get the lowest grade I had ever given a pupil in my career. You must understand, Mrs. Raimonda- what all that means: If the boy fails in learning the States’ language, he is doomed… Do you follow up his homework preparation? It seems to me that he does not dedicate himself to a solemn learning of our basic words and their meaning. And even the form of the English letters that he writes- is terrible: They seem like Greek to me…”
“Sorry,” said Ramona, “I have an infant at home, Nahumik’s brother.”
She revealed to the teacher that she and her family had been used to write Hebrew, not Greek. “and you can understand,” she continued, “that I can’t control Nahum, my son… But I’m sure that he has enough brain in head, I know him. He will close the gap , that derives from our being new immigrants. So, I ask you: Please be considerate to behave patiently and tolerantly to him…”
Dear reader, don’t wonder about the form of such a seemingly rich idiom, that Ramona had put into her sentence. She had prepared the expressive words before, using a vucabulary, knowing she would use them in her argue with the teacher.
“Well, I’ll be patient,” murmured the teacher. She was a sixty years old witch, her skin folded and callused face showing that, in addition to her grey hair and beetroot color lipstick; and the short skirt she was wearing, (that emphasized the twisting veins and of her legs) could not hide her old age either.
“My pupil Nahumik has to be assisted by an external power,” the teacher added a vague hint, “so that his end-year grade will be improved. Otherwise…”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Ramona, understanding that her adversary was trying to load on her back an expensive cost, for hiring a he-or-she private teacher for Nahumik.
“There is a friend of mine,” said the teacher, Mrs. Smartpool, without reddening, “Her name is Doris Fox, I’ll talk to her about you son. She will assist him in homework- for a relatively poor amount. I rely on her ability to help and make the kid advance.”
So it happened that the woman teacher’s friend became Nahumik’s private English teacher for three months. She had a simple teaching method: She ordered him to repeat words by heart and write them properly in his special copybook, and in “innocent writing”- as that was called in those days, which means- every letter of a word in its right place, and every tail or head of F or T etc. – in its due shape and its height in the copybook’s line.
At the end of the fiorst year of his English private study, Nahumik got the recommendation of his “priv” –as he shortly called her, that he can pass and step to the Elementary Upper Class. She remarked, while talking to the English regular teacher, that Nahum Kaplansky would better- of course- continue study with her on the following yeartoo… But at that time the Kaplnsky family moved to another area, and Nahumik began to join a new school. In that school he was lucky to have a very sympathetic male teacher for English, who would never make a pupil fail, never would force him to attend the same class for two years. So – even a failing pupil like our Nahumik succeeded to climb to the next class, the sixth Elementary Class. “Simply,” this teacher would say, “We have to let everyone to reach the sixth very soon, get rid of him in this point, and forget him. It’s a vanity and unjust – to let a pupil remain in the last class of Elementary. What’s the benefit of that?”
But Nahumik’s troubles did not end with that. While he entered the first class of Secondary school, he met a new pedant and strict she-teacher who wished to make his ‘life short’ – as he complained to his mother. So, Ramona went heavy hearted to the first ‘parents’ meeting, and teacher Miss Betty Middletown announced, that she would recommend “to ban the boy from passing to the second class next. He fails and refails in all the exams, and his homework is very poor too. I pity his future, madam. Therefore I speak so bluntly. Your son Nahum mixes singular with plural, the tense he uses in his sentences is always the present one, his vocabulary is of a five years kid, and the compositions that he writes are very poor, as each one includes only two sentences, and that’s rare too!”
“I understand…” said Ramona, who had remembered the previous teacher, in the Elementary school, “I presume that you suggest to me that I’ll hire for him a private she-teacher, like we had done last year?”
“I propose a male teacher for the boy, madam. I recommend of Mr. Jack Taub…He is an ex-movies actor, here is his business card. He had acted mainly in the films of Wilder and Huston and Cecil De Mill, performing as an outstanding, impressive ststist ... He’s really also an excellant English teacher, and I’m sure he would give your son a serious push in our language. Even if the is a stubborn refuser, as we would say. Jack is both a comical and tragic actor, so the kid will be entertained, and that will improve his wish and dedication to his language study. Well, I am sure that your son will understand that his future depends on that, and will collaborate. He already owns a basic treasure of knowledge, so why lose it?...Given in Jack’s hands- his success is ensured and undoubted, rely on my words... Your dear kid is called Nahum… A Biblical nice name, isn’t it?”
Ramona immediately hired the famous teacher Jack, who was a nice elder male of seventy at that time, and would arrive in Nahumik’s home two afternoons a week at six p.m...
First of all, Jack wisely demanded from his pupil to write only short sentences.
“For summarizig and describing a story’s character,” he said to his pupil, “you have to find and put on paper his main features, physical, spiritual and habitual- so to say. In class you would learn adapted stories of American authors, that had been found fit for teenagers…So, no big problem,” continued Jack, “you’ll have to learn by heart some important sentences that I will dictate to you about each story. In case of a cursed exam, by which your teacher would surprise you from time to time- you’ll find the proper sentences and insert them as answers to the questionaire. It would be like fixing an iron nail into a soft wooden board. See what I mean? O’Key?”
“Will such a system enable me at least a grade-mark ‘pass’,” asked weary and worried Nahumik.
“Of course, therefore I’m here to guide you what and how to prepare. Don’t fear to insert even a sentence that you surely know to have a weak connection to the correct, precise and aspired answer…”
The system worked. Nahumik knew vaguely what to write about Hamlet and about the characters of adapted American stories, that his class had studied, (Jack London and O’ Henry and Bennet were among them)…But he passed the exams.
At that period Nahumik discovered a ‘Romantic Connection’ between his morning woman teacher and his afternoon private male teacher Jack. One day he looked outside of his room’s window, and saw how Miss Betty Middletown was arriving slowly towards his house and waiting for Jack near an avenue tree. Then the two sweethearts were walking side by side. He discerned that they were cautious not to give hands to one another of embrace, like afraid from being seen too linked together in public. Jack’s hands were crossed behind his back, his palms fondly ‘caress one another’; and the teacher Betty was grabbing her white purse, and her face turned up to look at Jack’s face, while listening to his wise words to her.
‘They seem to talk about the world, or about people’s problems,’ Nahumik reflected, ‘maybe they even philosophize about some other subject …But why should I push my nose into their business?…”
Had Nahumik listened at that second to Jack, he would have heard him saying:
“All my life I thought that Jewish Philosopher Espinoza had correctly said: ‘No love- except the intellectual love, will continue forever’… But we will proceed in our relationship, Betty, as we know and like and appreciate each other’s rich wisdom and wealthy life experience… What d’you say about that?”
“Of course, my opinion is like yours, dear ,” said Betty wit
h a joyfull laugh.
When Nahumik told his mom Ramona about his discovery regarding the queer couple, she told him that she had already inquired her clients about the two. I was revealed to her that what her son had occasionally seen - was the ‘naked truth’.(Ramona did not use these words while telling that to the boy, of course)
“What is strange in all that?” interferred Solomon in their talk, as it was at dinner time, when the family members were sitting together. “We are not said to denounce Miss Betty Middletown for that maneuvre to provide some earning to her sweetheart. ..You understand, Nahumik, that this is the manner that people behave. And teachers are not angels.”
Kaplansky was talking very decisively, and the boy knew that there were cases in which Solomon’s wisdom would reflect the concrete reality, or the ‘situation As Is’. Though this had raised in Nahumik some resistance and sourness. Solomon’s ideas were som,etimes based only on blunt facts, but sharply styled: ‘They create in me a mixed feeling- of appreciation and nausea,’ – thought Nahumik.
So, the English teacher found a pretty solution to pupil Nahumik’s language problem. But there was another teacher, who was no less trouble maker, and she was called Missis Algebra. She was young, and her surname was Elizabeth. Her original red hair was changed to be dark black. Her nose was quite nice, and she had tried to erase the freckles out of it and out of her cheeks - by a certain ointment or ‘cosmetic Operation’, so the class’ girls would say. She had a somewhat protuberant belly,. though she was very meagre, and not once there were gossip rumors that she was just pregnant at that time. But…
“But from whom?” Nahumik raised that question to his best friend Wolfee, a Jew like himself, “We have heard that her husband is serving in the American Army near Frankfurt, Germany- and she is here, a lonely cat.”
“I’ve paid attention’” said Wolfee, “that in the intermissions at school, she would enjoy to talk with our history he-teacher, moustached Mr. Martin.”
“And I’ve heard he’s married to a good looking wife, so…”
“Would it seem strange to you,” said Wolfee very smartly, “if you know that there are cases, in which both sneak out of school- and go somewhere? I saw, that whenever they were meeting, they were laughing to each other, even winking…”
“No, I don’t suspect her,” said Nahumik, “because if she had been deeply in love with someone- she would not have done to me such a disgrace, and behave to me in such an unjustified manner. She would always give me the tail of all grades, in my case: one or two.”
When the Parents’ Meeting with the teachers arrived, the Educating Teacher- Ms. Zelda- told Rimona, that the math teacher Liz had been desperate about Nahumik, her son.
“How could it be?” complained Rimona, “He would sit every night with the problematic equations and fix letter symbols for the Unknowns requested to be revealed, and so on… I think, that the accusation that Liz raised against my son- derives from her teaching method! My son complains that she would always run with the excellent pupils, and she permits the failing and lagging ones to go behind, it doesn’t matter to her. It’s unfair! The one who would try to ask something and by that halt the majority in the class to advance…he would see a gesture of shrinking arms – and hear a saying: ‘You better ask your friends about that, but not now’. And my son,” continued Rimona to complain, “has hardly one friend in class, who is ignorant like himself in math… So, considering that we are living relatively far from any classmate… and that we are new here…please…”
“Next year I will move him from this class,” promised the teacher, “he really has a psychological resistance to our best math teacher. Maybe she is really not fit for kids like him, with such light mental difficulties…Yes, your son must have another math teacher… I will not let him remain in the second class of this Secondary school’s because of the math… I promise you.”
When Nahumik finished his second class in the Secondary school, he became already thirteen. He remembered that a boy who had arrived to that age in Israel- would celebrate a Bar Mitzvah, birthday party at home for his friends- and also arrange a celebration in synagogue, where he would read a chapter in Toarah and in a Prophet’s book- before the congregation.
Solomon Kaplansky also remembered that, and spoke deliberately about that with Rimona, in the presence of Nahumik and of little Danny.
“I understand that you would have wished some ceremony here, at home,” he told Nahumik, “But you don’t anticipate for your Goyim friends to attend, eh? And you certainly don’t think about going to a synagogue here. The Jewish only synagogue that I know- is far. It’s called ‘Truth people’- and the praying people there are far from truth tellers, they’re lyers all. They are hypocrytes, and arrive to synagogue for entertainment purpose. They come to hear the’cantor’ the man whom we were calling ‘Khazan’ in Poland. They want to embrace the old Jewish past, that has passed from the world forever. Understand? So, we should not want to celebrate among them.”
‘Solomon said: “WE shouldn’t…’- so thought Nahumik, ‘ as if he expected that I want him join me in my celebration. I won’t explain to him that what I really pray for- is that I won’t long so much to my forgotten little town in Israel. I don’t miss now a synagogue or any religious place. ..I just miss good friends. I have none- except Wolfee, who knows what a Bar Mitzvah is, as he would become thirteen too very soon…He really offered me to make together the ceremony in the synagogue of his father. Even if it’s far from my home…’
But before the two could have arranged anything- Wolfee swiftly left LA with all his family.
“I’m sorry,” Wolfee told Nahumik, “I have to leave LA with my parents tomorrow. My pa owes a lot of money to banks and to private people.” The pink cheeks boy Wolfee had to roam with his parents to Pasadena,. His father would open there a meat butchery. But the business won’t be recorded on his name – for fear that his ex-banks and other enemies would pursue him and sue him or kill him without suing, so said Wolfee. He will hold in his shop all kinds of kosher meat and sausages and other conserves. . .
Nahumik had had a good memory from his friend Wolfee. The boy was in close and devoted friendship with him for two years, in the hardest time of his existance in America. Nahumik was feeling very lonely and bored, because his parents were very busy, and his inclination to prepare his homework properly and seriously- had been minimal. Of course, Rimona had tried to mobilize him for Dany’s Baby-sitting in late afternoon hours, so that she would be able top assist Solomon in his Photo store. But in the yearly holiday in summer- Nahumik found some idle time, in which he decided to develop the garden around the old hired house. The sparse grass area reminded him Ramona’s house in his homeland, and so- he found interest to cultivate the ground and prepare it for something to grow. He dug pits around the trees, and cut down the wild grass growing around on two heightened ‘empty plantbeds’ or really ex-flowerbeds, that had been risen there by the previous owner of Kaplansky’s house.
“But what will I sow in that empty land?” Nahumik asked Wolfee that question, as his friend began to visit him frequently at that time.
“D’you know some words in Yiddish language?” Wolfee raised a counter question.
“Of course. In Israel- l grown up people would talk that language, and I had listened. Though now Kaplansky – my step father- tells me that he avoids talking publicly with somebody in that language, as here it’s thought to be non-intelligent and a proof of lower class people…”
“Well,” said Wolfee, “ if you are familiar with Yiddish, you know what ‘bobkes’ are…”
“I think it’s common beans,” said Nahumik, “I know that from my step-pa, who once told my mom, still while we were in Israel: The Arabs had not shot Bobkes on the Jews, as people now think. They fired real bullets, who killed my son; and they’ll buy more and more ammunition, they’re rich from Oil. So we don’t have any chance to live here, and we’ll leave this cursed place, called The
Holy Land…He said all that in order that I would hear, and come with them here to U.S.…”
“Okey, let’s sow here Bobkes beans,” said Wolfee. “Jews will love our goods; we’ll sell it and earn money. I suggest to cultivate and grow that stuff together. I’ll buy seeds tomorrow.”
“Well,” said Nahumik.
“We’ll share our profits fifty fifty, O’Key?”
Nahumik agreed, and after the growing season they picked the beans. They both put the harvest into two containers, that were used before for souring cocumbers. They peeled the ‘Baseballed’ fruit of the beans, separating it from its green yellow cover, and Nahumik brought that home. He put the containers without covering them - under the tub in his mother’s kitchen. After a week – his friend came back for a visit, and asked about the fine beans. Nahumik had not looked at them in recent days…When the two friends pulled the containers out of the under-tub place, they saw that all the harvest had grown mold: like cobwebs peeped between and over the beans; the fruits’ color became grey and a smell of stink penetrated the boys noses…Wolfee was a good friend. He did not rebuke his friend Nahumik for that failure.
The Kaplansky family was now living quietly in their separate house. It had some resemblance to Ramona and Nahumik house in their past, not in a downtown block’s flat, that the family had lived in its first period in LA area. . .This change in their living condition took place just in the time that Ramona, who had devoted her first months in U.S. for care taking of her baby- Danny, had found a Mexican baby-caretaker fit for the job. Ramona entered to work with her husband in the store as a full time job, and became his main assistant there. She dared to replenish its shape very soon, and afterward. Kaplansky became aware, that she had understood the trade and shown a splendid marketing capability.
So, shortly after beginning her work there, Ramona hanged on the door of her wide sales room – a brass plaque, saying: ‘Store Marketing Manager’. Practically she was a simple seller, but she had known that in U.S.- a title of a person as a manger is most important. She also hanged a wide plateboard over the store’s front door: “Kaplansky’s ”, and under it was stated:
“All that you want to know about photographing, screening, recording, loudspeakers– for private use and for movie making and Television as well”.(TV was then in its first days).
Step by step the couple had begun to know some photographers, screenwriters, directors and producers – who became clients. Also a few movie stars would appear in the store, and Ramona was thrilled by them, more than Kaplansky. As a result, the couple’s income was increasing, what brought them to purchse the new house – a real small villa, as mentioned before.
As for Nahumik, after the bad experience he had with the rotten beans- he reflected it had been a curse for him to live many years in Kaplansky’s house. He began to hate it: ‘I can’t compare that house with my native home’- so he reflected, ‘How well I remember every room and corner and tree and coop in my first home – but here and now? - I’d hardly pay attention to the orange trees and roses and grass in the small courtyard, or to the climbing bushes at the fence. My eyes even hardly catch the sight of two little angels’ statuettes, made of beige and pink marble, at the entry gate. Kaplansky has set them there…’
One day he was asked by Kaplansky if he liked them, and he said yes. But only a day after he really went to look at them, telling himself that they were rude copies of such thousand statuettes existing in the neigborhood. ‘Solomon’ – said Nahumik to himself – ‘is enthusiastic about everything here. He is used to ask mom nowadays: ‘could we afford this article in our town in the Mandatory Palestine?’ – He would hardly mention the new State of Israel, maybe just to resent me, Nahumik, of whom he thinks to be too much patriotic…’
Indeed, for Nahumik it had not been so easy to feel safe in the new surrounding and atmosphere. But despite his mental suffering, he knew that he would overcome the difficulties. Of course it would take time…’For inserting a root in here,’ he reflected, ‘I should become sociable in the new country, I know that...For the time being, I’m dependable on my parents. I am aware that Kaplansky was always trying to disconnect me from Jews, and from anything that would remind me of Israel, my homeland… Last year I’ve seen it: He had refused to send me to an afternoon Jewish small school. I thought that he had intended to cut my connection here to Jewish life absoutely. However, he sent Mom to tell me the reason: ‘You know much more than any child would know in America about Hebrew, and about Jewish tradition.’ I became to know that Solomon had been right, only after speaking with a boy, who was studying here some Hebrew and Torah in Elementary school – and I’ve learned that he had no notion about Talmud at all, so…I can keep calm.”
Nahumik began to understand that his longings to the past won’t help him to overcome the hard obstacles he would face in America. Some time he was still trying to curse in his heart, like praying for silly wishes to realize, like “May God cause my childhood to drive away very soon”. Or: “May The Almighty keep me as well as he kept Jacob in the Bible, in Aram”. But he knew for sure it won’t happen. Despite that he was feeling that no one should fear even of a lonely-secluded future, he should strive to change his way of thinking about his fate. ‘Yes – if you had been a very strong God believer- you could be robust and think that God ‘makes you pass an experiment every day’. Rabbi Aaron had lived many years among foreign people; and he was condoled by knowing that they had been as afraid and worried as himelf. But he had known, that in his spirit- there were some ‘antagonizing horror, anti terror microbes’. Their power- which had derived from the Almighty’s, would rescue him. Yeah, Rabbi Aaron had an enormous confidence in old bearded God… I don’t have that in me. I was educated in a free family, that had set religion aside, as ‘God has deserted us,’- like Mom was used to say. But at the same time she had sent me to study Jewish Talmud and Torah in Hittin’s small ‘afternoon class’ in the Synagogue… The hell, why do I recollect about all that?
CHAPTER 2
To America and Back Page 1