To America and Back
Page 42
“I don’t mind, that you try to write Hebrew poems in your free time,” said Solomon to his wife Ramona, “though, it would come instead of helping me in my screenplay editing .”
It seemed that Humik’s parents had become jealous of each other as artists: Solomon in his film production trial, and she in her Hebrew white verse or simple prose, we don’t know exactly.
“I am doubtful,” said Solomon, ”if a woman, writing in Hebrew –but from America, will be accepted by any Israeli editor or publisher. You risk to hear them say, that they have enough trash in their country; they don’t need to import that. I don’t tell you my judgement about your poetry, as I haven’t read it.”
“I see that you hate my experimental writing. You have tried for two years to produce your film, and haven’t yet succeeded. Let’s bet who will see his artistic creation first, in public.”
“O’key, I’ll hear you. Please summarize very shortly the main story and the idea behind your poem.”
“O’key, I see you have calmed down. I had heard that story from Elkano, you’ll wonder. Once he had listened to a lecture of a wise Jew, who came to speak in a kibbuts, where Elkano was living for a short time…”
“It took him one month – to conclude that to live such a place had not been for him.”
“I know. Now the man’s surname was Kluger.”
“How symbbolic. Kluger in Yiddish and in German- is: wise.”
“That Kluger was obssesively dealing with statistics and data about famous and excelling Jews. Not Rabbis, who had always been known in the inner circle of the Jews – but those who were famous also to other nations. For example- he had made a list of all Nobel Prize winners, up to that time, when Elkano was a teenager. He found that Jews had thirty percents of the Nobel prize winners, despite antisemitism. And he had a theory why.”
“Really, why?” asked Solomon.
“Oh, that is written in my poem.”
“Sounds interestring,” said Solomon.
“Though I don’t know Kluger’s private name, I’ve called him on your name: Solomon, which means as wise as King Solomon.”
“Agreed,” laughed Solomon Kaplansky.
“I will read a part of it. This poem begins with claiming that the Jews had loved the diaspora, or their exile- since they had been in Egypt, so the Bible tell us.”
“O’key, go on… But that move around the world does not make them wiser, or having an excellent mind- relatively more than other nations.”
“I’ll read: ‘ Jews had been vagabonds a very long time , moving among nations and countries.
They were not Missionaires, but they were asked in what kind of God they had believed and worshipped.
They answered : The one, that is unseen, virtual, abstract – but despite that he is a warrior and just and appears in time, and intervenes in history – though he is eternal…
He could not be described, as he has no material entity, nor an energy.”
“Fine,” interrupted Solomon, “because these two concepts as well as qualities- are exchangeable, as Einstein had proved.”
“God is spirit and unlimited and within and out of all what we know.” continued Ramona, “He would come to some men only in full ‘thin silence’, or in vision. Because of His non attainable characteristics, don’t wonder that very wise people from foreign nations fell in love with such an abstract and obscure entity. These had been extraordinary minded men, who were feeling before, that their Idols are none and/or nonesense. So, as Aritoteles told us, as ‘a man gives birth to a man, not to a horse nor to a monster’- the offspring of those geniuses were also Jews, that still today have special capabilities for study; also they have a certain intuition, that othres have relatively less, or lack at all.”
“But they should not be proud of that,” said Solomon, “First, because they had not foreseen the Holocaust. Second, the original Biblical Jews were few, and nowadays the Jews are even fewer, what will bring their end, as their present Rabbis would hardly allow others to join them.”
“Your last sentences,” said Ramona, “are correct. But if I add them to my poetry, it would seem clumsy, a whole treatise.”
“You have begun to think about God,” mocked Solomon, “You know why? You miss your father, who was a Rabbi.”
“Right, and I am longing to my son Humik, who I had sent to study with a Rabbi… ”
At that moment Ramona discerned little Danny standing by her, listening or asking something.
“Danny,” she said, “I will be thankful if you don’t disturb us now. You see I am talking with papa. Yes, a copybook with crossed column-line pages can also be used for drawing or writing poems, O’Key?”
The boy left the living room, telling himself they were again in the movies’ world, that make them both nervous.
“You finalise your poem, Ramonka.” said Solomon. “Then take a tour to Israel. I’ll write you a check to buy flight tickets, for you and for Danny. I won’t close the store for that, and I’ll remain here alone for a week or so. You desreve that vacation.”
“It will disturb you from dealing with the film production. But thank you, dear Solomon,” said Ramona.
“I am again in a deadly mindb-arrier, so it won’t hurt,” he said.
CHAPTER 42