JAFFA BEACH
H i s t o r i c a l F i c t i o n
F e d o r a H o r o w i t z
Copyright © 2013 Fedora Horowitz
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 1481991701
ISBN-13: 9781481991704
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906077
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
PART I:
Palestine, 1943
PART II:
Palestine, 1944-1948
PART III:
New York & Israel, 1968-1972
PART I :
1
Her mother’s voice reached the girl, “Shifra, are you still sitting by the window, daydreaming?” With a sigh, Shifra turned around and took in the drabness of the room.
The family lived in a two-room apartment on the second floor of a building in a narrow street in Geula, one of the two ultra orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem. From the kitchen, her mother’s voice admonished her again. “Shifra, didn’t you hear the bell of the kerosene man? He’s passing through our street. Quick! Take the ten-liter container and this money. Tell the neft man he’ll get the remainder next time.”
In the street in front of each apartment building, Shifra saw women in shaitels, their black stockings showing underneath their long skirts.
The sky was gray. Shifra shivered. It was cold in Jerusalem, even now in March, the month that was supposed to bring back the sun she was longing for so much. Their apartment was always cold, though the kitchen’s three primus stoves and the heating tanur in the big room were lit all the time. Their building was built with Jerusalem stone, heavy blocks of rock, dating probably from the time of the Prophets, Shifra thought, but that thought didn’t warm her up.
She had arrived just in time. The neft man, walked alongside his cart, ringing a bell while the smell of gas invaded the narrow street. The women waited in line, Shifra the last one.
“Nu, Shifrale, wus machst du, what do you do?” the bearded man asked her with a smirk. She kept her head low, but he continued. “Oy, if the Almighty had blessed me with a son, I would love to have you as my shnur, my daughter-in-law. Since my weib hot gistorben, you know that my wife died, I feel so lonely.”
Shifra didn’t answer. She had heard these words before. Silently she handed the man his money, “My mother said she’ll give you the rest next time.” He counted it then gave her back two piastres. “Go buy yourself a bow for your beautiful hair,” he said with a wink.
Shifra looked around. The street was deserted. She put the change in her pocket without a word, picked up the heavy can and started to climb the steps of her apartment, while from afar she heard the neft man ringing his bell again. It wasn’t the first time the man had given her change, a few piastres, even when he was paid the right amount. For the last few weeks she’d had to listen to the man’s litany. She had hidden the money in a tin can under her bed. It wouldn’t be long before she would use this money for her dream.
“Hurry,” her mother called Shifra from the top of the stairs. “There is much to do. Your father is going to come from shul soon, and you have to clean the rooms.”
After Shifra’s oldest sister married, her father decided that it was time for Shifra to stop going to Beth Yaakov, the girls’ yeshiva. She was thirteen at the time. “She has to help raise the little ones,” was his decision, though her father had never spoken directly to her on the subject. Actually, she didn’t care for the school, where they spoke mostly Yiddish, leaving the Lushen Kodesh, the holy language, for the reading of the Holy Books. But she was fond of two of her classmates, Chana and Shula, and she missed them. Their tales had opened a window to a world she never knew existed. After she left school, it was very seldom that she met them, but what they told her remained printed in her memory.
“The sea is so beautiful, blue and huge. When you look at the horizon, it seems that the sea is one with the sky,” Chana gushed enthusiastically one day, when she had just returned from visiting her cousins who lived near Tel-Aviv. “The water is warm, the waves cradle you. It is so delicious. When I grow up I want to live by the sea.” Shifra loved the cheerful Chana.
When Shula invited Shifra to her home, Shifra discovered a house full of books, not only in Yiddish or Lushen Kodesh, but in English and other languages, too. “My father loves to read,” Shula had said with pride, “There are so many things one can learn,” she added. Shula told her that her father, who was born in Germany, had studied at the yeshiva, and also at the university. “Even before the Nazis came to power, he felt that it was no good for Jews to live in Germany. He left and came to Jerusalem. Rebono shel Olam, the Master of the Universe, guided his way.”
That evening Shifra told her mother about her visit with Shula. Her father was home and overheard her. “Shifra is not allowed to go there anymore!” he screamed. As always, he did not talk to her directly. “Those books are the books of the devil.”
Shifra’s mother’s face became livid, “You’ve heard your father,” she whispered, “You can’t go to Shula again.”
Though Shifra made excuses for not visiting Shula, that didn’t end their friendship, or Shifra’s desire to read the books Shula lent her. AS Palestine was under the British Mandate, the English language was an obligatory part of the curriculum, in yeshivas also. Shifra would wake up at dawn and read until her eyes hurt. She especially loved Andersen’s story about the orphan girl selling matches in the frosty night in Copenhagen. Like that girl’s eyes marveling at the warmth and the miracle of light, so Shifra’s eyes opened wide at the miracle of reading.
Her mother called her a dreamer. Shifra, sitting by the window, wove stories in her mind. Many times she sang to herself melodies she had heard her mother sing when she cradled the babies. But Shifra was cautious not to sing when her father was home. She was told that a woman’s voice could attract the devil. Singing was what Shifra loved most. She listened to the birds’ calls and tried to imitate their trills. That’s when she felt most alive. She’d love to be a bird, to feel free to sing, to feel free to fly over Chana’s wondrous sea.
“We have to go to Mahane Yehuda,” Shifra’s mother woke her from her reverie. “Tomorrow is Erev Shabbos, there is no time to be idle. Take the baskets and let’s go.”
Mahane Yehuda was the open market on Jaffa Street, the main thoroughfare in Jerusalem. First they went to the Shochet, the slaughterer, to buy the chicken they ate only on Shabbos. Then she helped carry the baskets with fruits and vegetables after her mother bargained with the sellers, always succeeding in saving a few piastres. While crossing the street she saw the yellow bus with the sign “Jaffa” stopping not far from the market. “Hurry,” her mother said, when Shifra slowed her pace, “stop looking around. The time moves fast and there is a lot to do at home.”
On Friday evening after the meal, her father seemed to be in a good mood. While Shifra washed the dishes, she heard him say to her mother, “I have something to tell you. Today Klotznik, the matchmaker, came to the study house to talk to me.”
“Not now,” answered her mother, putting a finger on her lips, “Vart, shpater, wait until later.”
That night Shifra couldn’t fall asleep. What did her father mean? She remembered when Klotznik came to propose the shammas’ son for her older sister. But Brana was eighteen at the time. When the entire household was quiet, she heard her father say, “It’s Shifra. The neft man sent Klotznik to talk to me. He wants to marry her.”
“You can’t be serious,” her mother said. “Shifra is barely fifteen. And he is about forty, if not more.” Her mother’s voice grew louder.
“Sh, sh,” sai
d her father, “Klotznik says that he has fallen in love with Shifra. He has only daughters. Shifra could bear a son, a son to say Kaddish after him. Think what a mitzvah that would be.”
Shifra heard her mother turning and tossing in bed. “No,” her mother said after a long pause, “she’s too young. Shifra is still a child.” But her father was snoring already.
Shifra couldn’t sleep all night. At shul on Shabbos morning, though she had to strain her eyes to see through the dividing mehitze, she saw the neft man approaching her father. She couldn’t hear but she saw the two men shaking hands at the end of their short conversation. Wiping his lips after the Shabbas meal, her father addressed his wife, “Get ready. We are going to celebrate a chasana on Lag Baomer,” (the only holiday during the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot when weddings are permitted by the Jewish Law).
“A chasana! A wedding! Father what are you saying? She’s still a child,” exclaimed her mother. She stopped suddenly when her husband, with frowning eyebrows, raised his hand to silence her.
That night Shifra’s feelings went from despair to revolt. It’s not right! They can’t sell me to the neft man! There should be a law that parents can’t decide their children’s future! But she knew that she couldn’t confront her father. He could do with her whatever he wanted. Even her mother couldn’t change his mind. Her fate was sealed. She cried, her face burrowed in the pillow, afraid she might awake her siblings.
In the morning, after her father had gone to study and her mother was busy preparing the small children for school, she took the tin can with the small change she received from the neft man and went to count it in the privacy of the bathroom. She didn’t know if the money was enough for the plan she had thought of during her sleepless night.
She realized that it was dangerous and maybe it wouldn’t work, but she knew she had to act. Just to wait for the right opportunity. Until then, she was going to make herself nishtvisendick, as though she was not aware of what awaits her.
The opportunity arrived earlier than she had hoped for. One evening, about two weeks before Pessach, she overheard her father whispering to her mother, “Nu, sheinele, vein?” to which her mother, her cheeks blushing, replied, “Morgen in der free– tomorrow morning.”
The next morning after her father and the children left for their yeshivas her mother said, “Shifra, I am going to Mikve. Take this note to Itzik, the grocer. I wrote everything we need on it. Ask him to add one more bottle of Kiddush wine for your father. He likes to take a sip not only on Shabbos. Tell Itzik that I’ll come at the end of the month to pay the account.”
Shifra kept quiet, though she felt tremulous. ”It’s going to happen, it’s going to happen,” her heart sang.
At the door, her mother turned around and after fishing a coin from her pocket said, “Shifrale, lately you’ve been such a good girl, you deserve a reward. Buy yourself something sweet from Itzik.” And she left.
Quickly Shifra added the coin to the money in her tin can. She would hurry to Itzik, after which she would still have time for her own preparations. Every month when her mother went to the Mikve she spent a couple of hours there. At the ritual bath she met women neighbors and had a little shmus, talking and gossiping with them, especially now, when she had news, though Shifra was sure that at least half of the neighborhood already knew that she was promised to the neft man.
Shifra was out of breath when she arrived home, her arms filled with groceries. She packed two apples and a slice of black bread and threw her mother’s old kerchief over her head. She didn’t want to take any chances. She knew that she was known in the neighborhood as the girl with the golden hair. How many times her friends had told her that she collected the sun in her braids.
There was no mirror in their home. When her sister, before getting married, had asked her father to buy a mirror, he screamed, “No mirror in my house! Mirror is the devil’s instrument. A woman has to be clean and modest.”
Besides the neft man, nobody else had told her that she was pretty. And who could believe him, who looked at her with lecherous eyes?
Shifra wore two pairs of underwear, her old shoes and a dark jacket. Still wary of being recognized, she decided to walk randomly around the narrow streets of Geula until she found a way to Jaffa Street.
When she arrived at a wide street that she recognized as R’hov Strauss, she breathed more easily. She knew where she was. At the next corner she’d turn right into Jaffa Street.
Shifra didn’t wait long for the fuming yellow bus. On the top was a sign with its destination written in three languages, English, Hebrew and Arabic. Shifra had a moment of confusion when the driver asked her if she wanted a one-way ticket, or aloch hazor.
“Where to?” The driver asked.
“Jaffa,” She mumbled, without looking at him. She handed him all her money, not knowing the cost.
“You have enough to buy a two-way ticket,” the driver said kindly. With her ticket in hand, and her cheeks burning, Shifra made her way toward the back of the bus, where she saw an empty seat.
She sat down and arranged the kerchief to hide most of her face. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears. What was she doing? How could she do this to her mother? She was sure that her father’s anger would fall on her mother when they found her missing from home.
“Azoy a bishe!” Such a shame! Shifra imagined him screaming. “I’ll not be able to look in the eyes of our neighbors. We are going to be the laughingstock of the community. And what am I suppose to tell the neft man?” Her mother would be standing there, the person to receive all the blame.
But when the driver announced the last stop before exiting Jerusalem, Shifra, though fearful and uneasy, didn’t make a move. She knew she still had time to return, to tell some lies about where she spent the last hours, but she wasn’t going to do it. Not yet. Instead, she watched enchanted the lovely view of the garland of hills opening before her eyes. She’d never been outside her neighborhood, except on family visits, on Shabbat afternoons to her uncle who lived in Mea Shearim.
How beautiful the hills were, each one gleaming in a different color. Shifra thought that she could even hear the birds singing, but she knew that it was only her imagination.
The bus distracted her with its puffing and screeching. She didn’t know that she had boarded the m’asef, the bus that stops at all Arab villages and other small communities between Jerusalem and Jaffa, but she didn’t mind. She absorbed the new sights; the way people were dressed, the scraps of conversation she heard in Hebrew, English and Arabic. She saw bearded Chassidim sitting in front and moving their bodies up and down, praying Tefilas Haderech, the travel prayer. As the bus sighed and shook, winding down the narrow highway, Shifra was sorry she hadn’t brought her Tefilas Haderech, too.
She knew that when she would return home after seeing the sea, she would have to fulfill the destiny that had been decided for her, but she would remember with pleasure that she had seen her dream. Since her friend Chana had told her about the yam, the sea, she’d had only one wish. To see it with her own eyes! To feel as free as a bird in front of its immensity, to breathe its air! She never forgot her friend’s words.
It was a long bus ride. At the beginning she tried to memorize the names of the Arab villages, Jewish settlements and the cities where the bus stopped, but there were too many to remember. By the time the bus driver announced Jaffa, she woke up from her reverie. She looked out the window. What a bustle, what a mix of people—even Mahane Yehuda market didn’t look like this on its busiest days.
The bus moved slowly along a wide avenue, which the driver called Jerusalem Boulevard. There were many stops along it but she hadn’t glimpsed the sea yet. She panicked. How would she know when to get off? A minute later the driver announced, “Next stop, the Clock Tower, last station.” Shifra saw that everybody was getting up and making for the door. She followed the crowd.
In the street she didn’t know where to look first. There were Arab men sitting in front
of their stores dressed in kafias and smoking from long pipes, young boys, running barefoot, holding newspapers under their arms and screaming in three languages, “Latest news about the war in Europe! President Roosevelt is confident that…” But Shifra couldn’t hear the end because of the noise of carts driven by donkeys, the honking of buses, and the screams of vendors.
Shifra knew there was a war. She had heard her father telling her mother after reading the Hamelitz newspaper, lent from one of their neighbors, “Hitler, should he burn in Hell, he killed Jews. No more Jews in Poland.” Shifra’s mother howled like a crazy dog, “Oi, mamoushka, my dear mother, where are you?” Since that day her mother lighted a remembrance candle every evening for one month.
The clock at the top of the tower rang thirteen times. Shifra looked up. It was one in the afternoon. So late already! She had left home at ten in the morning on a cloudy day in Jerusalem. Here in Jaffa she felt her clothes burn her body. But where was the sea? Shifra was ready to ask an old woman seated on a bench near the bus stop when she saw an English policeman directing the traffic. She approached and asked him, her eyes cast downward, “Please, tell me how to get to the beach.”
The policeman smiled. “Follow the sun,” he said, but when he saw that she didn’t understand him, he pointed to a street and said, “Take this street, go to the end of it. There you’ll see the beach.”
Shifra forgot to thank him. She ran, her eyes blinded by the sun. When she reached the end of the street a fantastic view opened before her. The azure sea sparkled like millions of diamonds, and the foam formed by the waves’ crest looked like the frost adorning the cakes at weddings. And it seemed endless.
She jumped on the rocks leading to the sea. Shifra didn’t remember if there was a blessing for seeing the sea for the first time, as one says a blessing before eating a new fruit.
On the beach she saw young children playing in the sand, all naked. She couldn’t look at their mothers. She had never seen women so scantily dressed. She blushed. How could women be so immodest? Farther along she saw men wearing only knee-length underwear, playing ball. Oh, her father was right, saying the world was full of debauchery.
Jaffa Beach: Historical Fiction Page 1