My Father, His Daughter

by Yaël Dayan

  Shmuel, my grandfather, had nothing sophisticated about him. He operated and functioned on a basic level. A handsome, strong man, he idealized farming and the “return to the land,” even when he was away on peculiar missions to the Labor Zionist supporters in Toronto or the Zionist Congress in Basel. On his return, he would proudly switch to old patched work clothes and boots and enjoy the smell of the cowshed and the touch of the wooden plow handle, as if his trips abroad were a burdensome sacrifice. He had a hearty laugh, and in an endearingly naïve way, his love for Dvorah was mingled with humble adoration. He knew he had deprived her of a fulfilling intellectual life, and his dogged insistence on working hard on the farm, washing dishes, and writing long, apologetic letters was his way of offering a small compensation.

  The gap between the ideology my grandfather preached and the way he lived his life would, he hoped, be bridged by the fact that his firstborn son, Moshe, and his family would epitomize the success of the new Zionism. Although my father, for reasons beyond his control, was to be unable to fulfill these hopes, in 1946 we could pass for a model of Jewish renewal.

  Our little house was very modest, but matched my parents’ dreams of a warm nest. The curtains were handmade, with appliqués; the tablecloth hand-embroidered; and the atmosphere was cozy and welcoming. Though we were as poor as the other farmers, there were little luxuries to indulge in. We children had a radio, had toys; we were meticulously dressed, and we each had shoes, boots, and sandals. Work was shared by all. I had my list of chores in the house and on the farm. I helped by picking fruit and vegetables, cleaning and sorting the eggs, and feeding the chickens. I walked to the bakery every day, munching on the fresh loaf as I returned home, and tended my brothers Udi and the newborn Assi, who was a delightful, happy baby. The entire family spent afternoons in the farmyard, busy with the livestock and the plants, Assi in a packing crate with his bottle, and even Udi running around trying to help.

  Education was something that more or less just happened. School was a few short hours a day, the class an odd mixture of age groups, and if the teacher was good we considered ourselves lucky. We were taught the basics, and I doubt whether any of us or our teachers and parents thought at the time of higher education or the need to prepare for it. At the same time, Father put a great deal into our education, not systematically but in his way of sharing his loves and interests. I never missed the birthing of a cow, no matter how late at night, or a new book of poems by Alterman or Shlonsky, the two great poets of that period. To this day, I carry exciting memories both of a newborn calf being pulled out and emerging, trying to stand on its frail legs while being licked by his mother, and of the rhymes of Alterman and Shlonsky (still my favorite Hebrew poets), I can hear their rhymes the way I did then, sitting high on a haystack, listening to my father recite them to me.

  There were no whispers at home. There was nothing that could not be said in front of us children, and if we “understood” the times we lived in, or loved our farm and homeland, this was the result of my parents’ honesty. We were not “indoctrinated.” Rather, formative experiences like climbing Mount Tabor on a Saturday, Assi in my father’s arms and Udi in a pram, picking flowers, the sunsets over the Carmel ridge, the smell of the thirsty soil responding to the first rain, the taste of the first tangerines in late fall were all particles in the larger composition which produced love of land and country. Arabs from neighboring tribes visited us often. I was never told an Arab was the enemy. British soldiers were still safeguarding the Mandate. Security was not questioned, and as far as we were concerned, there was no other homeland and the gathering clouds of the looming war did not darken those joyful days.

  I had schoolmates. They came home, and I visited them, though my father was not particularly friendly to the other children. We mostly met in back yards; we had a tree house, where we played for hours, each of us bringing her own toys to share. We also made new friends when a group of Holocaust survivors was brought to Nahalal. They were known as the “Teheran children,” although most of them were of Polish origin and many were orphans. Each family “adopted” a child, and so our family of five was enlarged and Tzippi joined us, bringing with her the smells and fears of a tragedy still unknown to us.

  Tzippi was older and much larger than I. An intruder at first, she soon found her place among us, and if she was jealous of me, I was not aware of it. Several of the “Teheran children” were in my class, and they represented the outside world in a way that was both curious and frightening. Names like Lila, Vera, Sammy were names from novels; their accents were strange; and they spoke mostly Yiddish. They had no families but spoke of their parents and longed for them. They told us of wealth and large houses, of the big cities and large farmhouses where they had hidden, but they talked little of the deportation. They were possessive and often unkind, and we were told to be generous and patient, to share and to understand something which, of course, was beyond understanding or grasping.

  The war also meant postcards from Zorik and Aviva, my father’s brother and sister, who were both abroad with the Jewish units of the British Army. I adored them both and missed them, and when Zorik stayed on at the end of the war to help with Jewish refugees, I could connect Tzippi’s presence with his absence.

  All recollections of my childhood are a little suspect, but I think mine are probably genuine in part because of two sensations that dim them which have remained with me. One had to do with the Dayan family status in Nahalal, and the other with the stifling feeling the circle had on us. We were not too popular in the moshav community. My grandfather was often criticized for high preaching and poor performance; my grandmother was pitied by many for having to endure by herself but envied by others for her rich and deep intellectual life. The Dayans as a clan were too independent, too nonconformist, too stubborn, and not generous enough to fit the pattern. Though less rigid than the commune, the cooperative demanded a certain conformity from each individual. The villagers resented Dvorah for trying to sell her homemade jam privately, my father for trying to cultivate new strains of vegetables, my mother for dressing me in “city” dresses, and all of us for being slightly different. Jealousy did not breed sanctions, and we derived strength and self-confidence from one another, ignoring the gossip. If we were indeed different, we were not ashamed of it.

  Of the Dayans, only my mother was truly comfortable in the closed circle. She who was not born into it found security in offered friendships, had no desire or need to excel above others, was tolerant, and accepted human shortcomings and even failures. I was competitive and eager, but not for one minute did I see my world as limited to this circular, muddy dirt track, though I was happy to be protected by it. I read like a maniac, daydreaming about dramas and romances that could only occur away from the village circle. I didn’t feel trapped in the circle, but I never ignored the way out of it. Somehow, my family made it clear that the optimum in quality—of people or opportunities or possible achievements—existed mostly outside.

  The Dayans were founders, and hardworking farmers. We had our own farms, and Nahalal was undeniably and inextricably our one and only home. Yet, more than anybody else, we had secret or open “escape routes” to the outside world, bloodlines and sources to widen our scopes: Shmuel’s travels around the world, and his frequent trips to Tel Aviv; my mother’s parents coming, and us visiting with them; Father’s Haganah activities, which continued intermittently and kept us from taking his daily presence for granted; Dvorah’s illness, which resulted in long periods of disappearance in hospitals or the Motza sanatorium. Zorik was in Europe, Aviva back from Egypt, my mother’s sister Reumah was in London, Tzippi’s father was in Europe and expected to come and perhaps take her away. The world did not end at the wide perimeter of the cultivated fields of Nahalal. The Carmel ridge to the west, the Hill of Moreh in the east were as far as the eye could see, but the Dayans had wings and the sky was the limit. Or so I believed whenever I thought of my future life.

  The Valley of Jezr
eel was celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, and I was selected to read a poem “On behalf of the grandchildren” in a large ceremony in Ein Harod. Dressed in a white dress, with dangling embroidered cherries sewn on it, I made my first public appearance. To reach the microphone, I was placed on a chair, and to the proud delight of my grandparents, I read the poem and the greeting loud and clear. The success led to another appearance at the Nahalal anniversary celebration. This time I composed my own speech, encouraging the Diaspora children to join us in the sacred project of returning to our land, offering to share with them our homes, joys, and sense of freedom. I was eight, a fast learner and an impressionable child, and no doubt I easily digested some of my grandfather’s high-key, enthusiastic, and oversimplified truisms.

  It was at this time that my father, with little enthusiasm and many doubts, took his first step into the local political arena. Very few young people then found party politics attractive or enticing, and the first line of leadership in Mapai (Ben-Gurion’s Zionist Labor Party) was composed of men and women in their late fifties. There was a call for more involvement on the part of the younger generation, and candidates were recruited to participate in committees and councils. Ben-Gurion encouraged the Young Mapai members, as they were sure to back the activist line he urged when the world war was over. A sense of duty rather than a desire to embark on a political career, then, motivated my father to present himself as candidate, and together with Shimon Peres he was elected in 1946 to represent the Young Guard at the Zionist Congress in Basel. Shmuel was an official delegate to the congress, and enough funds were raised and scraped to enable my mother and Dvorah to go along. Zorik was to meet the family in Switzerland; my Aunt Reumah planned to join them from London; and we were left with Aviva and a young woman from the village who moved in.

  The preparations, the packing, and the arrangements were a source of great excitement and pride. I was unaware of the political implication of the congress, which was, in fact, going to vote to choose between Weizmann’s moderation and Ben-Gurion’s activist policies. My parents were going to Paris after the congress for corrective surgery on my father’s eye socket, hoping to be able to get rid of the black patch and use an artificial eye. I was promised a watch and chocolates—the two predictable Swiss gifts—and I promised to write daily.

  The trip was only a partial success. My father’s speech, his first to a large assembly of “strangers,” won him minor fame and the complimentary acknowledgment of Ben-Gurion, which he treasured. But, while Zorik returned to Germany and Reumah volunteered to work with UNRRA at the DP camps, my father’s operation was a disaster. His body rejected the bone transplant. For days, he hallucinated in a high fever, nursed by French-speaking nuns in a miserable hospital, and my mother shared his pain and disappointment. Shmuel was injured in Italy in a car accident on the way home and was brought back on a stretcher. My parents returned exhausted, bringing me, as promised, my first watch.

  In Palestine, the British Mandate was about to terminate, and for all Jews the formation of a trained and equipped force was the central objective into which all efforts went. My father was summoned by Dori, Commander in Chief of the Haganah, and agreed to return to the military to work on intelligence projects.

  Though we didn’t move again, and the only major change in our daily lives was the hired laborer who helped with the heavy farm work, our family’s feeling of permanence and stability was disturbed. Father came home most nights, still worked on the farm many days, told us bedtime stories, and was as interested in details of schoolwork as before, but something had changed. The major competitor for his love, attention, and time—the “state”—had appeared, never to be fully removed. Time was the main thing. He had enough love for his family and his country, and his attention was totally undivided for each in its turn. He was never absent-minded or remote, or taken up with other thoughts while being with or listening or talking to us. But he was there less. Zorik was back, and married his fiancée, Mimi, in a lovely triple wedding where the whole village danced and rejoiced. Again, there was a feeling of borrowed time and stolen joys, and it touched us all. Many of the men were away training most of the time, and the women worked harder but distractedly and with terrible anxiety. Tzippi’s father arrived with other survivors of Bergen-Belsen, and the reunion was disastrous. The man frightened us all, with his stale chocolates, unshaved cheeks, and leather breeches. He was unstable and talked of a plan he had to save the Jewish state. He must meet with Ben-Gurion, he kept repeating, and Tzippi was hysterical, clinging to my parents and refusing to go near him. My father reassured her, but her world of expectations and dreams collapsed pathetically within minutes, and the man left, talking to himself. He was later hospitalized in a mental institution, and Tzippi continued to live with us as long as we were in Nahalal. His visit was a sign of the times and for me in part the slow filtering in of the knowledge that the dark side of life was not limited to Russian literature.

  Yet, before we wept, we danced again.

  On the night of November 29, 1947, the United Nations’ General Assembly voted to partition Palestine between Arabs and Jews. The partition resolution anticipated the establishment of an independent Jewish state, the culmination of age-old yearnings, of two thousand years of hopes and prayers—the fulfillment of a messianic dream.

  My father’s strong hands lifted me from my bed and sleep. Mother woke up Udi, and we dressed in a hurry. I half knew what was happening, and the excitement was contagious. We hurried—leaving Assi, who was still a baby, to sleep—to the community hall in the center of the village. Everybody was there, old and young, dancing to the music, kissing and embracing and crying with joy, until the rising sun painted the sky pink and it was time to milk the cows.

  If there was a vein of sadness in the faces of the dancers, it was a small indication of the price that would be paid. How many of these young people would be dancing here next year? How many of the children would be orphaned? How many mothers would be without sons? These thoughts could not be repressed, as, by the end of that week, thirty-six Jews were killed by Arab terrorists. The term “Arab” itself was gaining a new meaning. War was imminent, though not yet declared, and growing up had to be speeded up for us.

  My father never dramatized these things. Before, during, and after wars, he talked and wrote about them matter-of-factly. Even his deeply felt compassion for the casualties and their families was low-keyed, reverent. He was enthusiastic about the personal courage of others, ignoring his own, or taking it for granted, and did not indulge in the romantic or morose aspects of fighting.

  By the end of 1947, a full-scale war was on, though the official invasion of Israel by all the Arab countries was launched a few months later, when the British left and independence was declared. We dug trenches by the tangerine tree, for protection from shelling and air raids, and we knew that if the village siren sounded, we had to get into them. Jerusalem was cut off from the rest of the country, and for many weeks we lost touch with my grandparents, as the phone lines were down. Zorik and Mimi had had a baby boy, Uzi, and they were living in a suburb of Haifa. Zorik was serving as an officer in the Northern Carmeli Brigade, and it was clear he was never going to settle for farming in Nahalal. Aviva, Israel her husband, and their two children lived with my grandparents and were working on the farm. Israel was an officer, too, coming and going in much the same way my father did.

  We children played war games, talked in military jargon, and bragged about our fathers and uncles. The realization of what it was really like came with the shock of the first death in the village, in the family, someone we knew—and the first grave. The agony of this war shattered me with the cry of my Grandmother Dvorah when she was told that her youngest son, Zorik, had been killed. I had never seen her cry before, or I didn’t remember. I had never thought of her as old before, or even vulnerable. But after Zorik’s death my wise and all-knowing grandmother, disciplined and brave, was a broken person. Indeed, we were all helpless in our
anguish. Zorik was special to each of us. He was not a typical Dayan, with his optimism, his jolly, unmalicious humor, his vitality and sensitivity. Zorik kidded me and made me laugh; he teased me and told me funny stories. With Zorik I rode a horse for the first time. Zorik was Dvorah’s baby, my mother’s young brother, a friend to Reumah her sister, the village’s naughty darling. Zorik’s body was left for three days in the fields of Ramat Yohanan, unapproachable because of snipers. It was a warm May, and the last of the spring flowers, poppies and wild chrysanthemum, covered the fields when my father went to identify Zorik’s body. Mimi and Uzi, only a few months old, stayed with us, and Mimi insisted in her sobbing that Zorik was still alive. I knew the baby would never know his father, and I panicked. It could happen to me, and to my brothers. I had no control over the things that mattered, and there, in the coffin draped in black, could be my own father. The proximity of death was frightening. The candles burning in my grandparents’ house, the sobbing turning into screams by the grave, the disbelief on Shmuel’s pained face, my father’s inability to ease his mother’s anguish—memories were told and retold, as if talking about him, or reading his poems, or remembering things he said would resurrect him. I was never lied to, and reality was never bent in order to accommodate my age. Storks did not bring children into the world, and the dead did not disappear into the clouds in the sky to dwell with angels. Zorik would never return. He was buried in Shimron, and we laid fresh flowers on his grave. Mimi was a widow, my beloved grandparents were bereaved parents, and I found little if any comfort in my father reassuring me, time and time again, that he was not going to be hurt. He had got his bullet already, he said, and he survived it. Now he knew how to avoid them and he had no intention of being hit again. There was no god in our lives to pray to, so I had to take his word and try hard to believe what he said.