Hello, America

by Livia Bitton-Jackson

  The Seder is a bittersweet event. We celebrate our freedom from ancient Egyptian slavery and remember our modern slavery in Germany. We sing aloud about the glory of miracles that saved us at the Red Sea and in the Sinai Desert, and weep silently about the agony of our losses in Auschwitz, in Dachau, and in the slave labor camps scattered about the face of Europe. As Margit and Miklos glance at each other across the table I can see in the reflection of their shared pain a spark born. And my heart throbs with gratitude for the miracle of survival. For the miracle of life.

  Our first Passover Seder in America—it is a happy event after all.

  It is a good omen after all.

  Chapter Six

  AMERICAN PEERS

  One evening during Passover week we have a pleasant surprise. Aunt Lilly and Uncle Abish drop in unexpectedly for a short visit. We haven’t seen each other since our arrival, and I’m delighted to see them again.

  “I have regards for you from Aaron Klausner and from Mary Zimmerman,” Uncle Abish announces. “They were happy to hear that you arrived safely.”

  “Aaron Klausner? Mary Zimmerman?” Mother and I ask in unison. “Who are they?”

  “You don’t know? They are our cousins. First cousins to Mordecai and me. Their families came here many years ago, years before the First World War.”

  I have never heard about Papa’s cousins here in America. I am especially excited to learn that the Klausners have a daughter.

  “She is about your age, and she would like to meet you,” Aunt Lilly adds.

  A cousin my age, and she wants to meet me? I am ecstatic. “When can we meet? And how?”

  “I will telephone them and transmit your aunt’s phone number. I’m sure Judy will call you.”

  Judy? Is that her name? It must be a nickname for Judith. I like it. Judy … it has a nice ring.

  Aunt Lilly must have contacted the Klausner family right after her visit on Monday, because Tuesday morning bright and early I receive a phone call from Judy Klausner, my new cousin. She sounds just as excited about our meeting as I am.

  “We would love to have you come to our house for a weekend,” Judy says breathlessly. How about this coming weekend, Friday and Sabbath, the last days of Passover? Can you come?”

  “Oh, thank you … thank you for your kind invitation,” I reply with repressed excitement, somewhat awkwardly. “But I don’t know. I must discuss it with my family. Where do you live, Judy?”

  “In Williamsburg. It’s a section of Brooklyn. Your aunt and uncle will explain to you where it is. I hope you can come.”

  “I hope so too. Thank you again for inviting me. I’ll call back with the answer.”

  “How will you get there?” Mother asks when I hang up. “I hear Williamsburg is quite far from here.”

  In the evening there is a family consultation about Judy’s invitation. Both Mommy and Aunt Celia feel it is too long a journey for me to undertake by myself, but Uncle Martin dismisses their fears. “Elli is a big girl. It’s about time she started traveling on the trains. I will explain which subway train to take to the elevated line and where to change. There’s nothing to it. If you listen to these mother hens,” he says turning to me, “you’ll never leave the nest. This invitation is an ideal opportunity for you to test your independence.”

  Their resistance overcome, my two mothers start fussing over my clothes.

  “What will you wear? You don’t have any proper clothes,” Mother declares.

  “Yes indeed,” Aunt Celia chimes in. “You can’t go for a two-day visit to an American family wearing the dress you have. Your cousin Judy is an American girl. She probably has a different outfit for every day of the holiday.”

  “What’s wrong with the dress she’s wearing now?” Uncle asks indignantly. “It’s colorful, it’s clean, and it fits her well. With a figure like hers, she looks fabulous no matter what she wears.”

  “Thank you, Uncle, for sticking up for me. But be careful not to make my aunt jealous with your lavish compliments!”

  Mother and I have no money to buy new clothes, no money at all. Uncle’s intervention saves me from the embarrassment of having to admit it.

  The phone rings. “It’s your Uncle Abish. He wants to know if you are free tomorrow to go … but wait, he wants to talk to you.”

  Martin hands me the telephone receiver, and I cannot believe my ears when I hear what Uncle Abish called about. My heart dances with glee as I hang up.

  “You won’t believe this!” I shriek. “And don’t say I’ve made this up! Do you know what Uncle Abish wanted? Tomorrow they want to take me out to buy me a new summer outfit!” All three of them cheer. “You’ll end up making me into a believer in your mystic coincidences,” Uncle Martin declares.

  Uncle Abish and Aunt Lilly arrive in the afternoon in Tommy’s convertible, and take Mommy and me to Union Square in Manhattan. Uncle parks the car in front of a building decorated by enormous blue letters—KLEIN’S DEPARTMENT STORE. What’s a department store?

  Soon I find out that a department store is an overwhelming experience. Noisy shoppers cluster around piles of merchandise on long tables, others peruse clothes on hangers arrayed on long metal rods, and still other shoppers try on jackets and skirts in front of mirrors propped up among the aisles. And through all the shrill hustle and bustle cuts the insistent chiming of an invisible bell. All this cacophony combines to produce a hypnotic effect on me: I move about like a sleepwalker under a full moon.

  At Aunt Lilly’s urging I look through racks and racks of skirts and tops in a daze, dozens and dozens of them, of various shapes and colors while dodging the elbows of other shoppers.

  “Can’t you find anything you like?” Aunt Lilly asks cheerfully.

  “What about this one,” Mother suggests, yanking a pale blue outfit off the rack. “Try on the top to see if it fits.” The two women pull the top over my head, right over the dress I am wearing, and drag me to the nearest mirror. I look like a stuffed, pale scarecrow ready to keel over.

  “Beautiful!” Aunt Lilly exclaims. “It’s perfect on you. You look great.”

  “Not bad,” Mother concurs, and I am ready to pass out. Thank God the two women decide there is no need to try on the skirt; the skirt looks perfect.

  “Oh, thank you. Thank you!” I shout, ready to head for the exit.

  “Not yet, not yet,” Uncle Abish warns. “I want you to pick out a jacket from among these. They’re called coolie coats, the latest fashion rage.”

  The “latest fashion rage,” flared jackets with flared sleeves, come in two colors: white and red. Mother opts for red, more practical, and once again I’m posed in front of a mirror to be admired by the two sisters-in-law. Now even Uncle Abish joins in the chorus of approval, and I have no choice but to graciously submit to majority opinion.

  “Don’t you see how striking you look? This red is fabulous—it’s your color!” Aunt Lilly rhapsodizes.

  “I must say it’s quite becoming,” Mother concurs once again. Thank God they all acquiesce, Uncle Abish takes the garments to the cashier, and I hug and kiss him out of gratitude for putting an end to my torment! The exit is near the cashier and we file out of the department store, lugging the packages that now help pave the way for my visit with the Klausners.

  The view from the elevated train on the way to Williamsburg is enthralling. Entire neighborhoods unfold below my window as the subway car rattles unsteadily past.

  My whole body is taut as a piano wire in observing the scene and watching for the names of the stations so as not to miss Penn Street, my stop. I note that the car doors slide open and shut in a matter of seconds. I pray silently that I succeed in slipping out of the train in time.

  It’s about an hour before sundown when I reach the Penn Street Station in Williamsburg and exit the train without mishap. Standing on the platform of the elevated train, I see that the streets of Williamsburg spreading out below me are alive with men of all ages scurrying in all directions, some wearing wide-r
immed black hats, others gray and brown fedoras, many others, black skullcaps. A distinctive air of the approaching Shabbat exudes from the crowd, and I am overcome by a sense of déjá vu. I have witnessed this scene… .I have been there… .I have been there long ago … in the vanished, never-never land of Before.

  As I walk up the front stairs on Penn Street and ring the bell, I am gripped by momentary panic: What if these new cousins do not share my love of family? What if their invitation was a mere gesture of pity for a poor new immigrant?

  But then the door opens, and all my fears are dispelled by the family’s warm welcome. One by one they greet me in the narrow entrance hall. “Isten hozott! May God be blessed for bringing you here!” Judy’s mother, Rozsi, cries out in Hungarian. Her embrace is followed by the embraces of her father, Aaron, and then Judy herself, and by the awkward handshake of her younger brother, Saul.

  My sense of belonging deepens during the festive Sabbath dinner. As we begin to get acquainted and the adults begin telling family stories, a new, magic world opens before me. I am amazed to learn from Cousin Aaron details of my father’s family history I had never known! I learn how my grandfather as a young teen escaped from Czarist Russia, making his way west by skating on frozen rivers… . How he sneaked across the Austro-Hungarian border into Slovakia through snowcovered woods and made his way to the first major town where a wealthy grain merchant took him in and gave him shelter.

  Mr. Weinstein, the kindhearted grain merchant of Bartfeld, or Bardejov as the town is called in Slovak, was known for helping the needy and sheltering fugitives from Czarist tyranny. He was known for providing them with money and supplies and helping them to continue their way to safer parts in the interior of the country.

  In my grandfather’s case, however, the relationship did not end there, Aaron relates. Mr. Moshe Weinstein recognized the athletic young man as a fine Hebrew scholar, and when he noticed a special attraction between him and his eldest daughter, Chava, he decided to arrange a marriage between the young couple.

  “My grandmother Chava and grandfather Getsel! So Mr. Weinstein, the generous grain merchant, was Papa’s grandfather! I’ve never heard any of this! Why didn’t Papa tell me any of this?”

  “He couldn’t,” Aaron explains. “In your country it was too dangerous to talk about your grandfather’s escape from Russia, his illegal entry into Slovakia. All the children were sworn to secrecy. It is only here in America that it’s safe to talk about it.”

  I’m fascinated by the encounter between my grandparents, between Getsel, the young Russian fugitive, and Chava, the rich man’s daughter. Theirs was a fairy-tale romance, just like my encounter with Dr. Hirschfield. All at once they become real people, their story becomes real, and I understand the extent of my loss—the story I have just found is beyond my reach.

  Grandfather Getsel died years before I was born. My grandmother Chava I met briefly when I was eight years old—for the first and the last time. The threat of war was in the air then; Hungarian forces had occupied our section of Slovakia, and one of Mommy’s brothers came from Hungary through the newly opened border to see us. When he returned home he took me back with him for a visit in Hungary.

  This brief spell of freedom was the eye of the hurricane, the beginning of the end. The end came rapidly. Five years later the family I met was no longer. Grandmother Chava together with her daughter and two youngest granddaughters suffocated in a gas chamber in Auschwitz. Her son-in-law and a grandson died somewhere in a slave labor camp in the Ukraine. And her two eldest granddaughters, whom I met briefly in Auschwitz, vanished in the vast gulag of German death camps.

  During dinner I find out other amazing news. In 1905 Papa’s grandparents Moshe and Sarah Weinstein left their five children and all their estate behind and moved to Jerusalem in the Holy Land! Papa’s grandparents actually lived in Jerusalem and died in Jerusalem! And they were buried on the Mount of Olives!

  “Wow! That’s incredible news!” I exclaim. “Here I believed we had no roots … no ancestral graves anywhere! I believed all traces of our existence were wiped out by the Holocaust, and now I find out that Papa’s grandparents are buried on the holiest site of the globe! Their tombs are to be found on the Mount of Olives! As soon as I can save enough money for a plane ticket,” I vow, “I will fly to Israel to visit the graves of Papa’s ancestors.”

  “Unfortunately you can’t do that, Elli,” Cousin Aaron says softly. “The Mount of Olives is Jordanian territory; it’s off-limits to Jews.”

  “Since when?”

  “About two years ago, when the State of Israel was established. The Arab states attacked from all sides, and the Jordanians succeeded in capturing East Jerusalem, the Western Wall, and many other Jewish holy sites like Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.”

  A deep silence descends on the festive table, and Aaron continues, his voice barely above a whisper, “News reached us that the cemetery on the Mount of Olives was desecrated. Most of the tombs were hurled down the slope, some used as steps for latrines, some carted away, to be used in highway construction… .”

  What? The tombs of Papa’s grandparents desecrated on the sacred Mount of Olives … used as steps for latrines! How could that have happened? And why?

  I have just found them, Papa’s ancestral graves. I can’t lose them now!

  “Don’t worry, Elli,” Rozsi interjects in a comforting tone. “The day will come when we will reclaim our ancestral graves, and we will restore them.”

  Judy changes the subject, and the mood shifts.

  “My club will hold its weekly session here tonight,” she confides, adding apologetically, “I could not reschedule it when I found out you’d be visiting. Elli, I hope you don’t mind.

  “Our meetings are held on Friday evenings in each other’s homes,” Judy goes on to explain. “It’s sort of a debating society. For each session one of the members prepares a talk on a specific subject, and then the group debates it. Everyone is free to ask questions, make comments.”

  “Mind? Oh, no! I’m glad I happen to be here, to be part of it … to learn. What’s the topic tonight?”

  “Since it’s Passover, the topic relates to the holiday. Tonight’s the seventh day of Passover, the seventh day after the Exodus from Egypt, when the Children of Israel witnessed the splitting of the Red Sea and marched through on dry land. The lecturer will focus on the scientific debate that surrounds the biblical account of the miracle. The title he submitted for his talk is ‘A Divine Miracle or a Natural Phenomenon?’”

  How fascinating. I have never been exposed to anything like this. As the guests file in and the living room fills with girls and boys my age or a bit older, I feel my stomach muscles contract. How will Judy’s friends relate to me? Will I, the greenhorn, be accepted by these young Americans, most of them college students? And I have not even gone to high school! Will they snub me for being younger, for my ignorance … for my foreign accent?

  “Should I introduce you? Or you’d rather I don’t?” Judy asks in a whisper before the room fills to the brim.

  “No, no. Please don’t introduce me,” I whisper back.

  About fifty or sixty young people crowd into the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. They sit on every available place, and when even these are filled they sit on the carpet with natural ease, without a fuss. They fill the spaces between the kitchen and the foyer, and even the stairs leading to the bedrooms.

  The lecture and the discussion that follows are even more interesting than I anticipated. The speaker poses a dilemma between the biblical account and the scientific approach to the splitting of the Red Sea, which formed an escape route for the Israelites from the advancing Egyptian cavalry.

  “The biblical account is simple: It was a divine miracle. No explanation is necessary,” the speaker begins. “The scientific approach, however, demands proof,” he continues. “According to the scientific approach it was no miracle, but a simple natural phenomenon. A strong east wind, blowing all night,
coincided with the ebbing tide and exposed the narrow isthmus joining the Bitter Lakes to the Red Sea, enabling the Israelites to cross as on dry land. How do you reconcile the two views?”

  An animated debate follows, and I listen with growing amazement at the extent of knowledge and the depth of intellectual curiosity exhibited by this group of young people. How much I have missed! Will I ever be able to catch up?

  I raise my hand to ask a question, and members of the group, one by one, turn around, curious to identify the unfamiliar voice.

  “Meet my cousin Elli.” Judy now rises to introduce me, and I feel like sinking into the ground. “She arrived from Europe two weeks ago. How do you like her English?”

  “Almost three weeks ago,” I mumble.

  Some of the guests applaud, others offer friendly smiles, and I feel a surge of gratitude for the show of acceptance. The debate grows livelier as the hours slip by and the grandfather clock in the dining room begins to chime twelve.

  “It’s midnight!” Judy the hostess exclaims. “And I haven’t even served you some drinks!”

  She hurries to the kitchen and reemerges with a tray of fruit, cookies, and soft drinks, and the company cheerfully breaks for the refreshments.

  As they leave, Judy’s friends one by one shake hands, wishing me well in my new homeland. I am moved by their warmth and their openness.

  Secretly I resolve to emulate these young Americans so I can become part of their world.

  And one more thing. No one noticed the number on my arm. Thank you, God. Help me blend in.

  After all the others leave, Judy’s two close friends, Betty and Florence, stay behind a bit longer, and the three of us get acquainted.

  “This was the best session ever,” Betty says to me. “Thanks to your provocative questions.”

  “How do you like her English?” Judy asks again. “Isn’t she something? She came just three weeks ago. Or not even?”