Yes, I want to tell you about Tetouan...
You don't even know where it's at, yes, it's quite far from here, not just geographically, there's a huge emotional distance, Tetouan is located at the northern part of Morocco, very close to Spain, twenty km from Gibraltar, what is this place, the closest place the Jews migrated to in the sixteenth century after the Spanish expulsion, that closeness hid a great distance inside, great distance between expectations and reality, the Jews always considered themselves Spanish that took a long trip away from home, and they will soon go back to their homes, to Granada, Seville, Toledo, Vinarós and Badalona, in just a few days, they believed that for many long years, and kept speaking good old Spanish for hundreds of years, talking about the beautiful home in Spain, about the keys they saved, about everything, I know some went back to Spain, they converted to Christianity and went back to their homes and cities, maybe your mom is a descendent to such a family, otherwise it's hard to understand what drew us so badly to each other, that we left everything so we can stay together, and you know what Fernando, the years don’t answer these questions, they just sharpen them, sharpen them so hard that the tip becomes so sharp you could kill someone with it by stabbing him in the heart, I don't have an answer, I wish I did. My cousin, Mimon Benzimra, whom you met here in 1977, you might remember him, he looked at us with compassion, he claimed that ten to twenty percent of the population there was Jewish at the time of the Spanish expulsion, and a great some of them converted, so most Christian Spanish people today would be Jewish descendants, it's a Jewish country actually, maybe your mom too, Marisol, maybe she's a Jewish offspring too, she never said anything, but her father always took me aside and tried to tell me a secret and then moved on to talk about the civil war and his great pride in Guardia Civil, Franco's police, maybe he wanted to tell me something, maybe he was still afraid, and maybe it's just my imagination and the excuses of a son of a religious family who abandoned Judaism, abandoned it completely for the sake of a woman, I don’t know, any way your grandfather was pleased with us getting married, not like her mom that didn't share this contentment, she was simply anti-Semitic, a born racist like a lot of Catholics from the Spanish towns, they actually believed we have tails, the Jews, that's what they were taught for hundreds of years, she was probably displeased with her daughter leaving to a different country as well, but she was no fool, she knew exactly what her daughter does in Madrid and where the money she sent them came from, and having a daughter married to a Jew was better than watching her become an old prostitute no one desires, well, I'm sorry if the word prostitute offends you, but I still hope you are mature enough to understand the circumstances, the history, and the weaknesses of people, I often asked myself weather god will punish me when I die, can you punish someone for loving, it sounds romantic, but I couldn’t even think of anybody or nothing else except Marisol for years, I prepared million answers, but when I scratch I know I can't give any proper answer, maybe I needed to suffer her loss just to make peace with myself, my mom used to send me canned meat to Spain so I would keep Kosher, because everything else wasn't, what's Kosher? I need to explain what is Kosher to my son, that's the food we eat, that Jews eat, if you noticed I always said I don’t like pork, but I never tried pork, it is forbidden for Jews, maybe it's the last commandment I kept, after being an adulterer, Shabbat desecrator, I desecrated everything, you probably don't know what these things are, Judaism is full of laws, laws and more laws, and I kept all of them until I was twenty and went to Madrid, my mom and dad, and us, we were one of the more religious families in Tetouan, we didn't even get our bread from the grocery, we used to bake it at home, so it would be Kosher, my mom used to examine the wheat for hours and grind it herself, Simi Benzimra, and now her son explain his son such basic things like pork, maybe I better burn this page and you will know nothing, how does knowing all these things help you, you'll convert to Judaism, your son too, you'll go to Tetouan, to Jerusalem, what are you going to do with all that? Yet, there is still a calling I need to follow and tell you everything, you can stop here, or continue, things will get much more complicated for you if you keep reading, and you won't be able to understand too, you won't, why didn't I tell you all this earlier, a man like you who grew up in a country like Venezuela, with all its problems, with all the poverty and corruption, will never understand what anti-Semitism is, won't understand why there are Jews like myself who need to keep hiding behind a mask, the mask of the big world, the mask of money, the mask of the big banquets, the waste, the "everything will be O.K" mask, when I know, deep inside of me, I always know that nothing is wrong, that nothing can be right, I forget so much...
Fernando, as you know, you were born after your mother went through great agony, ten years after we got married, in 1958, we married in 1948, on the day of Israel's inception, I don’t know why and how it happened, on May 5th 1948 we registered here in Venezuela as newlyweds, here in Caracas, it's just like you married exactly on Rosh Hashanah, which you don’t even know what that is, but I knew, and your birth, as you may expect, on Yom Kippur, what does all those names mean you might ask, what's with all these names you wonder, what are all these words, they're Jewish holidays, maybe you’ve heard about Kippur before, and maybe you’ve heard about more than just that, Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish new year, but it's not a celebration exactly, this very day starts ten days of regret and making amendment, and how far am I from that, I found out how far when I went to the synagogue last Saturday, I felt so distant from all those Jews, and so closeactually, I was there for one day and I felt like I spent my whole lifethere, as if I never parted from these faces, from the Sananes, and the Hatchwell and the Benzimra and the Chokron and the Benaroch and the Azancot and the Barsesat, all the faces looked so familiar, not to them of course, a lot of them there were born after I got married and my shame kept me from going there, and maybe not just the shame, but their faces looked so similar to their father's in Tetouan, as if they just copied the simple chairs and added some wealth and the synagogue stayed the same, and the tunes, you must go and hear them, the wonderful tunes, so gentle, rang in my head for hours and hours, I'll need to go there tomorrow too, on Friday, because Jewish day begins in the evening, when it gets dark, so Shabbat starts on Friday evening, there is a night service named Arvit, and a morning service named Shaharit, maybe you should go there, and you will say your name is Benzimra, maybe one of them will know who you are, don’t talk too much, as they remember everything the people of Tetouan, they remember things that hurt them over fifty years ago, getting even never stops there, they are probably still upset with me, but not as upset as I am with myself, now when I see I have a Christian son, see my grandsons are lost forever, it would make me so happy if you converted after reading this letter, but I know these are only dreams, I feel like a traitor of history, I betrayed five hundred years of standing tall in front of all of mankind's storms, in front of all of the temptations to convert, I betrayed my ancestors who didn't convert in Toledo or Valencia or Granada, and left their homes and countries to look for new life, I betrayed all the hard years they went through in Tetouan, I betrayed their anticipation to go back to Spain, their ability to stay locked up and humiliated in the Juderia after belonging to Spanish Novelty, I betrayed their struggle with surviving, the meaning of poverty they went through, and I did, wedid, because there where others too, as soon as we got a bit richer and left to study in the universities of Madrid I went back there and became gentile, I didn't actually convert to Christianity, but it's even worse, I left Judaism for a space, without being forced too, can you understand my misery, and these are the causes of my sickness, not the cholesterol and not the heart attacks, as the heart just follows this fraction that broke my heart, it's the heart that attacks, the real heart, the heart that didn't find the right way to live it's life, the heart that lost it, the train that since I got back to Madrid kept running on the wrong track, and don’t get me wrong, I loved your mom deeply, and she loved me too, and she l
oved you as well, and never talked about me being Jew and her being Catholic, even though she knew I was tormenting inside, she didn't intervene, and I could have went to the synagogue if I wanted to, and she wouldn’t have said anything about it, but I thought I can plaster the lie, I thought I can't live a life split in two, going to the synagogue on Kippur on one hand and living with a Christian and eating non-Kosher food and having a non-Jewish son on the other hand, and now I say maybe one should be split, and live within the contradictions, because that is life, contradictions, especially in the modern age, the attempt to erase the contradictions just makes them stronger with time, emphasizes them and makes us sick, and what do they do with us eventually? Bypass surgeries, bypassing what? Bypassing the heart, we want to bypass the heart, instead of making amends with it, physically bypassing it but bypassing our feelings at the same time, repressed feelings, maybe you will do it better, you never know, every generation thinks the next generation will do it better, and the next generation always does some things better, but does others worse, for every improvement on one side there's deterioration on the other side, it's all very pessimistic perhaps, but it seems I lived a lie for over forty years, I hid it from myself, I hid it from you, and now too, I want you to read it after I die, which will probably happen soon enough.
Tetouan, if I should start telling you about the place, I would tell you about the place that was the Alliance, the city's school, that ever since mid-nineteenth century had become the sacred place, the Holy Temple, all expectations were focused on that school, that was located inside the Juderia and then was moved to the more modern part of the city, that's the same place that was called the Alliance François, and was formed by Rabbi Yitzhak Benwalid, a Rabbi that thought that the best thing they could do for the sake of the Jews was to teach them professions, after professions came theoretical studies and that is where I studied and prepared to become the honor-student of the University of Madrid in 1948, few days before I got married and before immigrating out of Spain, when I look back on that I ask myself whether Rabbi Benwalid was so right, maybe the Jews were better off staying Jews and don't study as much as they did, study Torah, as my dad did every day right after closing his grocery and think about the Messiah and the redemption, well, he probably didn't think of universities but as a place to learn a profession that will help us to afford shoes, he didn't think of fancy cars, shofers, like the ones that started blooming the day the Spaniards entered Tetouan, he didn't think of beautiful Spanish ladies hooking the streets of Madrid, he was an innocent man, he was eighty years old when he founded the school, great man whose name was carried to distances, and nevertheless, this community made it where ever it settled in, in Caracas, in Madrid, in Nice, and in Argentina, they were better prepared than others for the changes of the modern world, even those who stayed in Morocco succeeded, and my cousin Jacob Benazeraf who moved to New York and won a Nobel Prize for Medicine, probably the only Tetouanese who won this prize, I didn't really won prizes, but the income in Podiatry which I specialized in here was very good, especially in the seventies when we operated on every small furuncle claiming it might become cancerous, people paid so much to get their fears removed, in the eighties money started going out of the country, and the rich started moving to Miami, and since then I started earning less, still, I am leaving you a nice inheritance that could surly help you with the rest of your life.
We'll get back to school, the Alliance, it was there where I learned French, and English, there I learned all the important subjects, a school who was always going through financial difficulties, but one which the rich of the city, and the rich of the world couldn't afford getting shut down, it was a symbol for a school network in the Jewish world, whose goal was to insert European culture in Jews, it was the first to be founded, and a symbol to all the others, that's why it's shut down would have caused the rest to be shut down too, the rich of France founded the organization, legend says that when they came to help and asked people what they want, instead of asking for food and clothes that they needed, they asked for a school so they may learn how to make their own money, there was great poverty in town, they say that kids didn't wear shoes, they say there was no food, but the chance they took turned out to be a wise one, fifty years later Jews begun seeing fruits of that decision, especially in trades at start, but later there were doctors and engineers who graduated universities in Spain or in France and came back to the city, and were able to build it, not everyone came back to Tetouan of course, Others moved to Rabat, or stayed in Madrid, or in France, others such as me, moved to Venezuela, and some moved to Israel too. Yes, if you decide to go look for them I have family in Israel, the Benzimra family, and the Sananes family on my mother's side, their names always were Moshe and Shmuel after their grandfathers, and Simi too, you won't find any Fernandos or Pedros obviously, like your son, those are Catholic names, I can't tell you anything about your generation, I know the playwright David Sananes by name, because he lives here in Caracas, and I know he is a homosexual, and I never even seen his play, and that's it, and he ,probably just like me, is disconnected from all of this Tetouan thing, I haven't seen them since the day of the ceremony, I didn't reach for them, they tried contacting me from time to time, but I avoided it, maybe avoided is not accurate, I was just ashamed I think, or maybe I couldn't bother with confronting them, at start you think the distance is temporary, that the wound will heal in few months, later the distance just gets bigger, and you get enclosed within your own life, your family, your new friends. I almost changed my name, but I didn't, for your sake, I'm not too sure what good would it bring you, maybe for your son, maybe he'll visit Tetouan to see where was his grandfather born, maybe he'll see a grave of one of his ancestors, and notice the same name, like an elephant going to the cemetery, passes through and roars a weeping roar, and gets on his way, but not just for you, it was just a step I couldn’t take, changing my name, it's like betraying thousands of people carrying it going through great dangers, carrying it even though it would have been much easier to change it, change their religion,
Fernando Benzimra, my son, don't forget what I can't remember, try to take part in your surname’s legacy, whichever way you see right, you belong to a bloodline of Rabbis, and doctors, they say that there was even a Benzimra regional doctor in the sixteenth century, and in spite of your father's crooked ways, I'm handing you the torch at the last minute.
When I die, I ask of you to go to the synagogue, find a Benzimra and ask him I be buried in a Jewish cemetery, and that one of them say Kaddish, simply say the word "Kaddish", it's a pray you say when a Jew dies, they'll understand.
10
- Dad, why don't you work here?
- I'm making all kinds of arrangements. I want to open a factory
- A factory of what?
- Either dye or seaweed.
- What is seaweed?
- It’s a plant that grows in the sea, especially in Eilat, in the red sea, and is used for medicine or for the industry.
- And why don’t you open a factory?
- Because you need all sorts of certifications, it's not like in Morocco, here I need to bring them a lot of papers, but I read about everything and learned everything so I know what to do.
- But you've been bringing them certifications for a while now, are you sure that's the right way?
- This is the way it is here, I'm not sure they will let me open the factory anymore.
- Why is that?
- The dye one, because they are protecting some dye factory monopoly, so they're saying it's messy or whatever, I'm not sure about the seaweed factory, I already brought them twenty documents they asked for, and still no permit.
- Over there we were Jews, dad, and here we're Moroccans, Knife-Moroccans, maybe it's because you're Moroccan,
- No, I don’t think so, it's because they're Ashkenazim.
- So why do they keep telling us we don't look like Moroccans
- They mean the other Moroccans
- Son, cut it out, you go study for your matriculation, and go to the university and everything will work out after that, they won't be able to talk to you like they talk to us, it is our country and we shouldn’t be afraid to fight here.
Keys to Tetouan Page 5