Exodus, Revisited

by Deborah Feldman

  Yes, she always made it quite clear that the past held no value or attraction for her, that indeed it was something to be fully erased from the record. But she was forgetting the contradiction inherent in announcing that to me, for I was very much a part and product of that past. By attempting to erase it, it was as if she were erasing me. How could she hope to have any kind of substantial relationship with a daughter who had emerged from that very mire she was determined to suppress?

  At Isaac’s party she designated herself the photographer, feeling more secure among the guests when she was behind the camera and occupied with a task. I watched her hide behind the lens, always hovering at the edge of my own frame of vision. How was it, I wondered, that it was so clear to me that I could have no hope of a future without making sense of the past, but it was something she could totally reject? What had caused me to turn out so different from her when I had inherited her genes, after all? It was as if, by abandoning me in her flight, she had amputated herself from that family tree I had drawn as a child. As a result, there was no hope of any relationship burgeoning between us.

  I turned my attention back to Isaac. The party was progressing very successfully. That particular early spring afternoon had turned quite hot, and the kids changed into bathing suits and clamored to jump into the lake. I distributed the water balloons I had prepared and challenged them all to first stay dry for the duration of the throwing contest. I watched as Isaac ran around excitedly, cupcake icing smeared around his mouth, looking gloriously happy to be the center of attention. I knew how special it felt to him, to have all his school friends here to celebrate. We’d never been entrenched in a place or community; it was the first time he could feel a sense of belonging, even if I didn’t.

  * * *

  —

  At that point Isaac had already figured out that he was one of very few Jewish students in his new school in the rolling hills of New England, but I had always encouraged him to share his culture and heritage with his peers as much as possible. He brought traditional pastries to school on Jewish holidays and was repeatedly called upon to explain Jewish culture to his fellow students, and no one had ever made him feel less than proud of this ability. I was thankful that he could at the very least trust that most people wouldn’t try to exclude or deny him anything because of his blood. But I also wanted him to understand that a form of rejection was a part of his history. How to explain that to him without scaring him? I would never have discussed the Holocaust with him at this age, or any of the other great persecution epics like the Spanish Inquisition, but I wanted to tell him the ethnic story of the Jewish diaspora, about how his ancestors lived under very different conditions than we do now. I decided to show him the movie Fiddler on the Roof, to explain to him what Jewish life had once been like, without exception—that it had taken a big war and a lot of change for us to live the way we were living now. As I watched him try to process that, I realized just how different the two of us were—I had never been able to see myself outside of that identity, and he was struggling to place himself inside it. Had we really made the break, then? Had I freed him from an imposed legacy and allowed him to define himself?

  * * *

  • • •

  On his spring break, I decided to take him with me on my next trip to Europe, and we traveled to Andalusia, the famed origin of Jewish thought on the continent. He had been learning Spanish in school, and it was an opportunity for him to practice his language skills while I continued to investigate the emotional pull I felt, which was only growing stronger with time. I knew that Spain played an important role not just for Jewish life on the European continent but also for my own particular heritage. The mystical beliefs and traditions that had been nurtured and recorded by medieval Sephardic scholars had later been integrated and fused into the Hasidic tradition, and I had been exposed to customs and stories as a child that had sprung from this era. By visiting Andalusia, I was acknowledging that the roots of my heritage went much deeper than Williamsburg, deeper even than the Habsburg Empire, deeper than the mid-eighteenth century, when the movement of Hasidism itself had been founded. It was an acknowledgment of a root system widespread and deeply buried, a confirmation that my past was more than just an anomaly but a product of global vicissitudes. I wanted Isaac to be able to understand this, to have the basic comfort that comes with knowing that one has a place in history.

  Between Seville and Granada we toured cities and towns; it was marvelous to be abroad with my son for the first time, like a dream I hadn’t dared to nurture had come true regardless. I showed him the grand mosques and cathedrals that dotted the Andalusian landscape; we were transfixed by the flamenco dancers; we encountered mountain goats on rocky inclines with the bells around their necks ringing incessantly; but we did not come across anything remotely Jewish. This was the seat of Jewish life in Europe, I had said to him. It was because of the Inquisition and its consequences that Jews were scattered in all the countries to the north. But where was the evidence of this, the minimal tribute? Everything else was still here; evidence of Moorish and Muslim influences remained despite the Christianization process; only our traces had been wiped out, and this was disheartening.

  I decided that we would travel to Córdoba by train, for I knew Maimonides had studied and written there, and I had read that a sculpture had been erected in his memory in a public square in the ancient Roman city where he had lived. When we arrived at the square it was clear this was now the center of a chic and expensive neighborhood. Like in Paris, when I had visited the Marais, this too had once been the Jewish ghetto, and now it was snooty and lined with overpriced boutiques. Nevertheless, the statue was still there, and when I pointed it out, Isaac danced excitedly around it. I still have the photo I snapped in that precious moment. There was no denying the simple joy inherent in that experience, just the two of us exploring the world and finally discovering something we felt personally connected to.

  Farther down the street, my guidebook said, lay the old synagogue. Upon arriving, we stepped into the tiny room that constituted one of the only three restored synagogues in the whole of Spain. It was smaller than my first apartment had been. Etchings and carvings in the stone wall had been recovered, but otherwise there was nothing on display except for a brass menorah in a case on the platform.

  “Why isn’t there any stuff?” Isaac asked me. I didn’t know what to say. We had been to so many lovingly restored cathedrals, all of which had been large and grandiose and had boasted many beautiful objects and artworks. He had a point.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe because everything was destroyed and they couldn’t find it.”

  The synagogue didn’t take more than three minutes to walk around; that’s how small it was. A box asked for a donation of fifty cents on the way out. I remembered the pricey admission fee to La Giralda in Seville and felt irritated at the comparison. At the Sefarad House across the street, a similarly low fee was charged—and like the synagogue, the Jewish museum was incredibly small, with limited offerings.

  I asked the man working behind the desk if he was Jewish, or if anyone who worked there was.

  “Unfortunately no, ma’am,” he said apologetically in a strong accent, “but all of us care very much about the history of the Jewish presence in Spain and are working very hard in the interest of preservation.”

  “Are there any Jews left in Córdoba?”

  “Very few. We used to have eleven, but then the rabbi’s son went to England to study, so now we have ten.”

  I couldn’t fathom how ten people managed to hold on to the idea of a community here. I had not come across any other reports of Jews in the region. Perhaps I simply did not understand how to approach the research process. Years later, I would return to Spain at the invitation of a Jewish community in Barcelona and learn exactly why I now found evidence of Jewish life so undetectable. But by then my understanding of Europe would have been transformed by
years spent living abroad, and my reflections on these early visits would be tinged with embarrassment bordering on incredulity.

  To be Jewish in Spain, they would explain to me, is synonymous with discretion and inconspicuousness. There was no nameplate next to the doorbell of their synagogue identifying it as such, and it was located in one apartment in a building of many, but this was not because they needed to hide; it was because hiding had become part of the ritual enactment of Jewish identity in Spain. The impact of the Marrano (Crypto-Jew) lifestyle echoed across the generations; it had been fully integrated into their traditions. Just because those traditions were no longer required didn’t mean they would get rid of them. After all, traditions were not valuable because of their current meaning, but rather because of their ancient one.

  Isaac was not discouraged by what the man had to say. He was very excited to explore the museum, and he raced ahead, calling to me when he saw something he wanted to show me. But I was very pensive as I walked through the small house.

  I looked down at the one-sheet guide the man had given me. It talked about the history of Jews in Córdoba. We were now in what was still called the Jewish quarter, but according to the document, any homes that had once been occupied by Jews were destroyed by riots in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

  On the way out, I pointed that out to the man. “So, if the so-called Jewish quarter was completely razed after the Jews had already been expelled, why still call it the Jewish quarter? Not even the ground I’m walking on is Jewish! It’s been inhabited by Christians for centuries.” He must have felt put on the spot. I’m sure no one had asked him that many questions, and I knew it was rude of me, but I was frustrated and couldn’t help myself.

  “It’s called the Jewish quarter in memory of the people who lived here before, ma’am,” he said patiently.

  “But look around,” I said. “This is now your cool neighborhood! This is your Soho, your West Village, like we have in Manhattan. Do you have any idea how insulting it is to have your trendiest, most expensive neighborhood invoke the memory of the people who were oppressed and tortured here? Spain has made no effort to reach out to the Jewish community or welcome them back. The right thing to do would be to give this neighborhood to them. No wonder there are only ten Jews left.”

  I wouldn’t live here in a million years, I thought. It would make me sick. I walked out of the museum feeling flattened.

  “You’re upset because they don’t have any more Jews here, right, Mommy?” Isaac asked.

  “I guess so. But I also thought there’d be more to see. This was the biggest Jewish community in Spain. We’ve been touring mosques and churches everywhere—those weren’t destroyed. Why couldn’t they have left just a little bit behind for us?”

  It shouldn’t have felt so personal, I knew then, but it did regardless, for in a way it was confirmation of what my grandparents had always assured me, that there was a kind of primeval drive to erase the existence of Jews, both in practice and in memory, and now I myself felt the threat of deletion, because without the past to mirror my present, I was forced into this floating rootless state and I deeply resented it. I wanted nothing more than to physically force the society around me to admit the truth, to admit that I was an integral part of their history.

  I was ready to leave, but on the way out of the quarter, now mobbed with fashionably dressed men and women sipping cappuccinos, I passed a small jewelry boutique. There were handmade Jewish stars on display in the window. The jeweler was an old man who didn’t speak English, but I pointed to the one I liked and he gave me the price. I laid the money on the table, and he opened the case and gently lifted the necklace from it. He looked at me and motioned putting it on, a questioning look on his face.

  “Yes, I want to wear it,” I said. I moved my hair to the side and allowed him to fasten the closure at the nape of my neck. When I saw the star come to rest on my sweater, it was as if I had tattooed myself with it.

  I walked out of that shop with that star on my collarbone, not hidden under my sweater. I thought of Milena in Paris and I held my head high and walked down the street holding Isaac’s hand, making sure to meet everyone’s gaze. It was as if I felt I was making some kind of announcement to the world about who I was, a proclamation. I am Jewish, I thought, looking straight ahead. No matter what my life looked like, my roots were right here too, a thousand years back perhaps, but just as legitimate as theirs. After all, in my grandfather’s library of Hebrew texts had lain the tomes of the great Sephardic scholars: Bartenura, Abulafia, Caro, Maimonides, Luria, Vital. The approach to thinking that these texts had imparted, with its circular and allegorical nature, had engraved them into our lives and our attitudes. It still played a significant role in how I approached problem solving, even today, and would likely do so for the rest of my life. The stories I had been told as a child, the myths and folktales that had filled my imagination, had been recorded here, and their threads burrowed through the loose soil of time to anchor me, through thousands of years, to foreign ground. My relationship to Europe was broad and multifaceted, a heritage that both I and my son could claim.

  When we landed back in New York the next day, I thought about that empty container, the one my grandmother had so feared, the presence of which I had sensed during my very first return to New York two years earlier, and I imagined that somewhere at the bottom of the vessel, a hole had been plugged. They had said, those teachers of my past, that a vessel could only be filled with spirituality and belief, but I knew now that something had been placed in mine, and it wasn’t that. The star I now wore was not a gesture of faith or a religious ritual; it was something deeper and simpler, a symbol of knowing oneself, of being whole in oneself. My grandmother had said that every container, so long as it had something in it, regardless of what, was worth opening a door for, and somewhere off in the distance I could just barely discern that a door had been opened, just a crack. I could sense a whole world beyond it, tugging at me with a magnetic force.

  * * *

  —

  It’s important to explain that although this attraction I felt toward Europe was very powerful, it was not easy then to define it as positive or negative. Although I longed to be abroad when I was in the States, and initially setting foot on the European continent was like a balm, I couldn’t help but notice that after spending a few days there, inevitably, I experienced a rigorous emotional stirring, almost an agitation. Of course, this was easy to explain on some level; although Europe was the home of my ancestors and the lost Atlantis that served as the sole reference for my grandmother’s Weltanschauung, it was also the place where the great catastrophe had occurred, the apocalypse that had nearly wiped us out, and my existence was predicated on the fact that my grandmother had managed, by a hairsbreadth, to survive. To return to such a place was in effect to risk one’s own renaissance and obliteration simultaneously.

  Some people speak of inherited Holocaust guilt. The children of survivors repress their feelings and squash their own dreams, I’d read. I had carried mourning with me all my life. I had spent nights lying awake picturing the faces of all those dead children, tormented by the idea of their aborted existence. Was I really here simply to replenish the family, as my grandfather had said? Was it up to me to birth their souls into the world so that they could live again? Or was it enough to retrace their path, so that they could be seen—so that their memories could live on forever in my spirit?

  As a child I had often dreamed about being in the concentration camps alongside my grandmother. I awoke always knowing with certainty that I had died, or was about to die, and that this was somehow proof that I still wasn’t strong enough, or special enough, to survive what my grandmother had endured. Compared to her, I was a whiny weakling. I would stand in front of the gilded, oxidized mirror in my grandmother’s bedroom when she was away and stare at myself for hours, trying to imagine what I would have looked like on the brink of dea
th, my skin clinging to my bones, my eyes sunken into my skull. What was different about her that she was able to emerge from the pit of human despair that surely would have swallowed me whole?

  Did she believe in her inalienable right to life in a way I could never hope to?

  Sometimes, when the house was empty and quiet, I had rooted through my grandmother’s drawers, looking for clues. It was difficult to learn anything about her otherwise. I asked many questions, but my grandmother was rarely in the mood to talk the way the women in my community did, chattering endlessly about trivial topics to one another. Her answers were notable for their cryptic brevity. Instead, I gathered frayed documents and sepia photographs obsessively, sneaking into my grandfather’s office to use the color copy machine before putting the found treasures back in their original hiding places. I kept a folder under my mattress stuffed with facsimiles of postcards, letters, and documents. I did not know why I felt so driven to color in the vague outlines of our family’s past at the time, to the point where I far exceeded the requirements of that momentous school assignment, but I remember that the folder was one of the few items I took with me when I eventually left my community. I abandoned years of diaries and journals and personal photographs, but for some reason I rescued that folder from the musty basement where it had lain untouched for years. Those documents were my only connection to my roots, not the shallow ones that had been planted in New York, but roots that went far back into the earth on the other side of the ocean. I had not known then, when I’d left, that the folder would prove central to the task of rebuilding my sense of self; I could not yet have imagined that to have a future I would need to lean far back into bygone eras to buttress it.

  Now I opened that folder for the first time in many years, leafing through papers written in various languages, trying to put together the story they told. I opened an old brown envelope, tattered at the edges, reinforced with brown tape, which I had found tucked between the Hungarian down comforters my grandmother stacked in the old wooden crib that had still sat in the corner of her bedroom, despite the fact that her youngest child was then in his thirties. There was an old passport, with a photo of my grandmother as a young girl, thick dark hair waving as if there was a breeze, pinned by a clip on the side where it was thickest. She had a tired smile on her face, like someone who had just completed a Herculean task, a long hike or swim. The date said 1947, so that task would have been an arduous recovery from typhus. She would have had to gain the weight lost in the concentration camp, grow back the hair, come to terms with the loss of everything.