After my father sat shiva for me and after I left home for good, I would return, surreptitiously, when I was needed, like when the thugs were set to attack. We had scouts out and about who would report back to me. I quickly became their leader, as I told you—not bragging, but it was a fact. My gang and I would vault out of the woods with our “weapons” to beat them to a bloody pulp, to defend the shtetl and our families. Did Papa know of what I did? Would he have been proud of me? Of that I will never know. He was so mulish, he would never have been able to withdraw his “death sentence” or even own up to being proud of me. And yet, he too was a man of his time. For a while, Mama would get word to me to meet her someplace. She would look so sad and old and small wearing her black dress with a black babushka wrapped around her head—always bringing me some thick black bread or a potato or a piece of meat or some clean clothes. After a while, she stopped coming, maybe because she felt disloyal to my father, or maybe she feared causing trouble for me if someone ever followed her. Or maybe it was just too painful for her to see me in the condition I was in—skin and bones—and she had to put me out of her mind. Who knows? What I know now is that I took after my father in many ways—we were both strong-minded, angry men—so maybe she was afraid of him, although, to my knowledge, he never laid a hand on her. I’d have killed him. His great temper and loud voice, like mine, could be frightening. I did my share of scaring others. So although hard to admit, we had things in common.
After a time, with a few friends, I began to spread out farther and farther beyond the woods surrounding our shtetl. We ventured out to the countryside and became fascinated with rumblings of a revolt building, an uprising that would make a better life for one and all and, most importantly, make a safe haven for the Jews—to know what it was not to fear opening the door, or be called kikes, or have to silently watch some Ukrainian hood knock a Jew’s kippah off his head or demand that he step off the road to make room for him.
My activities brought me to Vilna—I believe the year was 1897—yes, I was thirty-five. I hooked up with a group of like-minded men, and a few women, who set out to bring the Jewish workers in the Russian Empire together. We were socialists from geographical names that, at the time, were only words on a map: Poland, Latvia, the Ukraine, and Lithuania. We called ourselves the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter, or the General Jewish Labor Bund. I began to study men like Marx and, later, Trotsky. What I understood of their writings, I liked. I didn’t want to hear, nor was I truly interested in, some of Marx’s technical economic terms, like “use value” or “commodity” or “non-alienated labor.” I was tired of hearing words—only words—and wanted something practical that would lead to action. I especially liked his idea that “religion is the opiate of the people.” That summed up the way I felt. A poem that he wrote, I don’t know when, still speaks worlds to me:
I am caught in endless strife,
Endless ferment, endless dreams;
I cannot conform to life,
Will not travel with the stream.
But when I came across a piece he wrote when he was young, I didn’t like what he said about “the Jewish question.” By the way, he was a Jew whose father converted him to Protestantism when he was six. In the piece I just referred to, he wrote that Jews were “money-minded.” He wrote that the Jewish problem would disappear when we defeated Capitalism and when the Jews became assimilated. Ha! How would he think of Communist Russia knowing about the crimes perpetrated by Stalin and his faction? No one lets the Jews forget they are Jews. So I shouldn’t hold his youthful writings against him—certainly I had ideas that I’m not proud of, and I can excuse him for that—but I think he spoke out of both sides of his mouth when, in spite of his vehemently speaking out against anti-Semitism, he did nothing to oppose the persecution of the Zionists and the suppression of the Jewish religion by the authorities. I still don’t get it. How does one stand for freedom and emancipation—political or human freedom—and then not speak out when one group’s freedom is obstructed, even if one vehemently disagrees with its viewpoint?
I like this poem written by a German pastor—not a Jew—who regretted his own indifference during the Nazi era:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out for me
So, back to my experience in the Bund. Originally, we fought to establish a legitimate, if only a minority, role as members of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, or the RSDLP, but we were turned down. You see, unlike the Zionist movement, the Bund did not want to live in Palestine, nor did we want to speak Hebrew. What we wanted was to speak in our own Jewish national tongue—Yiddish—and so demanded rightful status as a secular minority—a “nation,” you could say, without borders. That was not to happen—in part because Comrade Lenin opposed those demands—and so we parted ways with great resentment. Later, because of political urgencies, we mended our fences but remained a splinter group due to factors too complex to go into here. And, to be honest, it’s one of the things that is somewhat fuzzy in my memory.
By the way, I have a picture of me taken in 1905 when I was forty-three, in Odessa, with the Bundist self-defense group. I look so young and full of hope, but I see traces of the man I would become, even the alte kacker I am today, minus the wrinkles. There is a very young woman in that picture who would become my wife and the mother of my children, but that’s for later.
While in the Bund movement, I met people like Mikhail Liber. Don’t get me wrong; that doesn’t mean I was one of the big shots—not even a little shot. Once, I saw Lenin speaking at a meeting of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. I don’t remember the year, but what I do remember is what he said: that government should not keep secrets and that they should always be under the supervision of public opinion. He said that a government is strong when people know everything. That sounded good to me—even now it’s a lesson to be learned—and for a while I was taken in and believed that the new Russian government would liberate the masses, including the Jews. I read that, like me, Lenin had a Jewish grandfather, and, like me, he changed his name from Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, but who knows why. Anyway, during the Russian Civil War I came to see that we could not stop the anti-Semitic pogroms nor the restrictions constantly imposed on the “kikes.” Nor could we change the way we were always the fall guys for everything—like it was in their blood.
You notice, I say the “Russian” Civil war because it was no longer my war. I could no longer believe there would ever be a secure place for Jews in Russia—Soviet or otherwise—or in any other place. Around that time, in France for example, I learned about a French captain named Dreyfus—a wealthy Jew—who had been falsely accused of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment, even after the authorities learned that the evidence was fake. Mobs took to the streets shouting, “Death to the Jews.” How couldn’t I believe that Jews would always be running from hatred and murder and guilt and blame? And I was right, because we know now—so many years later—that former Bundists were murdered during Stalin’s era, may the devil roast in Hell. And we know too that thousands of Jews were sent to work camps or murdered outright in Siberia. It was not my wish to leave Russia, but I knew that it was only a matter of time before they would “come for me,” as that German pastor said.
So again, the pattern of betrayal repeated itself—first my father and now Mother Russia. From events that I’ve read about, I know that had I remained in Odessa, I would have perished a long time ago. I read recently that some five thousand Jews from Odessa were killed in a concentration camp near Gvozdavka. Now, don’t you think I was perceptive to hav
e determined to immigrate to Palestine? Just think, my precious children, you would not have been born had I not made this decision.
This leads me to wonder what happened to my parents and to my brother, Mendel. Were they one of the five thousand—left to disintegrate in a mass grave? Did they die of starvation in Russia? Were they shipped off to the labor camps in Siberia or to a concentration camp in Germany? Or maybe they joined Moishe in America—just maybe they left before all of this happened? So many questions and so few answers. I’ll never know, and that’s my tragedy. My one consolation has been my children and, for a while, my wife.
I’ll tell you about that now. You recall that I mentioned the woman in the picture—her name was Ruchele. That was in 1905. I was forty-three and not too bad looking. She and I became friends in spite of a seventeen-year age difference; we spent a lot of time together talking about what to do and what the future held for us. We consoled each other about our losses, for she too had lost her entire family. Eventually, as these things go, we became more than friends. I can’t say it was love, but we had things in common: our socialism, our political passion for changing the life of the working class by agitating the masses to rebellion, creating self-defense groups to fight the pogroms, and, finally, leaving Russia. In 1909, when I was forty-seven, Ruchele discovered she was pregnant and insisted on marriage. For my part, I held no need to get either state or religious sanction for our relationship, but since it was important to her, we got married. And Meir was born, a beautiful boy.
Why we left: We were gravely disappointed, as I said, that in 1903 the Russian Socialist Democratic Party rejected the Jewish Bund’s demand for a self-governing arrangement, which led to our walking out. And we were disappointed once again, in 1904, when we discovered that members of the Bund had been shipped to Siberia. Added to that, when a fresh wave of anti-Semitic pogroms took place in “Mother Russia,” it forced us to see the writing on the wall—one had to be a numbskull not to. And that’s when we knew, despite my initial antagonism toward Zionism, that we had to immigrate to Palestine.
I had been reading about a socialist-Zionist movement led by Ber Borochov dedicated to the very same ideals that I believed in. Borochov was encouraging the intelligentsia, the landowners, and the capitalists to return to what he called “productive labor.” By that he meant a return to the soil—something I dreamed about, most likely due to my need to rid my hands of the blood that stained them. I also think it had to do with the garden my mother planted and the loving memories it held. When I think of it now, I can almost smell the ground, moist with fresh rain. Where else could we do that but in Palestine? There had been some short-lived talk for Jews to immigrate to Argentina and Uganda. It didn’t happen, so, after two years, taking all that we had saved (which wasn’t very much), we immigrated to Palestine in 1911. I was forty-nine. We had one child, who was two, and another boy, Daniel, was born onboard the ship. Those two children were unplanned, unlike the next—yet another son born in 1913. He, a sabra, I named after my brother Mendel. We dreamed about living on one of the collective farms and cultivating the land and forming socialist parties there. We heard of others who had had similar dreams but had to return home with their dreams devastated. With no water and the soil packed full of rocks, confronting starvation, they just gave up. We took that into account but were determined to succeed.
From the moment we resolved to leave, both Ruchele and I never uttered another word of the Russian language—we spoke Yiddish—and believe it or not, I can barely call up a word of it now if my life depended on it. Speaking Yiddish, as I’ve said, conformed to the Bund’s philosophy to maintain it as a national language. But when we got to Palestine, it was a different story. To survive, we had to know the language of the land, and so we studied Hebrew in every spare moment in between planting crops, digging up the soil, building homes and schools and hospitals. Of all those tasks, for me, in spite of my having learned five other tongues (I was much younger), learning Hebrew was the hardest. Ruchele was much better at it than I was, but I never got beyond a simple level of speaking. When my kids got older, they would make fun of the way I spoke. They would mimic me and laugh among themselves. They never said it outright, but I know they were ashamed to bring their friends home because of it. Most of the time, they refused to speak Yiddish, except when they needed something. So a lot of our conversation was done with hand gestures and pointing, with a few words of Hebrew and Yiddish thrown in. But when they got older, they scolded us for not knowing Yiddish better. Kids! Huh!
Life on the kibbutz was tough, but we took to it like ducks take to water. Dressed in blue work shirts and khaki shorts, at first we slept in tents, got up early, ate in the communal kitchen once it was built, cultivated the land, planted almond and olive trees, and, added to that, cleaned the kitchen or shower or toilets. There were community meetings in the evening after we visited the children in the “baby houses.” We went to bed early, weary from the long day’s work, but were exhilarated from what we were achieving. It was a good life. Until, as I mentioned, my nightmares began and until I had to remove myself from my family. Until my mind began to wander. Until I began to abuse my wife. I’m so ashamed of that, even though, before she died, I begged for forgiveness. Ruchele was a good wife and didn’t deserve my cruelty.
January 13, 1962
It has been three months since my last entry. It seems I’ve had a heart attack, and then when I was recuperating in the hospital, I suffered a stroke that has paralyzed my left arm and hand—my writing hand. Writing now, as you may imagine, is impossible, so I’ve asked my great-grandson, Yaa’kov—Meir’s son, may he rest in peace—to take down the remainder of what I have to say. There is much I had planned to write, but because I must conserve my energy, I will have to skip. I want to finish my story, but I fear there is little time left for that. I am, after all, one hundred, since I had a birthday when I was in the hospital, and so very tired. Yaa’kov suggests that I tell you a little about my sons and my grandchildren before returning to my story. So here goes: my oldest child, Meir, was born in Russia. He would have been fifty-three had he not died of lung cancer last year. He smoked himself to death. And Daniel, as I’ve said, was born on the ship as we traveled to Palestine. He is fifty-one and moved to the United States to go to college—in California—and never returned but for annual visits. He married a Catholic woman, Diane, and converted. And then there is my son Mendel, our sabra, who, believe it or not, became a rabbi. My children’s mother wanted all our children to have Hebrew names so they would fit in, but I insisted this one be named Mendel. He’s married to Chanah. And, by the way, I should mention that I not only changed my name to Samuel, in Hebrew that’s Shmuel, but also changed my last name to Keter. That was also Ruchele’s idea. I took particular pleasure in changing it to Keter, the Hebrew word for crown—my way of thumbing my nose to the czar because now I, not he, was wearing the crown, while his head was naked.
Now for my grandchildren. Meir had Yaa’kov, who now writes for me. He is twenty; his brother, Benjamin, is nineteen, and his sister, Eliana, is seventeen. Reuben, my youngest grandson, had six children. But I must leave off for now. Suddenly my eyes are closing with sleep. I feel so tired. And possibly Yaa’kov needs a rest, although he’d never say. As for the remainder of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, my mind is too muddled. Yaa’kov will help me to remember all their names tomorrow. Until tomorrow.
January 14, 1962
I am Yaa’kov, Meir’s son. My beloved great-grandfather died this morning at 10:31 a.m. He was sleeping when I arrived at 9 a.m., and I waited until he awoke to pick up where we’d left off yesterday. At one point he opened his eyes, looked at me as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t, and then he closed his eyes, squeezed my hand, whispered, I think, “Miriam” and “chazak v’ematz,” and died peacefully, as they say.
He lived a full, long, meaningful—but difficult—life, as you can read from his journal. He kept so much to himself. I knew nothin
g of his days in Russia or Poland or wherever else he roamed and nothing of his early days in Israel or what he called his breakdown or his early political activities. He was a complex man, at times depressed and sullen, but, for me, always loving and interested in what I and my siblings and cousins had to say. He was not the kind to say, “I love you,” but we knew from his actions and the looks he gave us that he loved us. He always had time for us, except when he went on his walks. Although a flawed individual, I loved and respected him as much as I could any human being. I was most like him, with my curly red mop of hair and my size, and so I believe we had a special connection, but perhaps my brothers would say the same thing. He also looked a great deal like my Uncle Reuben.
He arose at six every morning, working in the fields side by side with his coworkers almost until the end. He never complained and always shared the work equally. He would, at times, disappear for days, or weeks, without an explanation other than that he just needed to think. We knew not to question him, but I had the sense that he was trying to escape from a demon or something from the past. He would get a panic-stricken look on his face, and we knew that a walk was about to happen. And when he returned, his tranquil demeanor returned with him.
He spoke only of his mother, never his father, and of her only in the most loving terms. According to him, she was a saint. Well, not a saint. Nor did he speak of his brothers; in fact, I didn’t know he had any until I read this memoir. Only once, when we stayed up late one evening and he’d had a bit too much to drink, he revealed the love he once had for a woman in his youth—a woman he claimed to be the only woman he loved. I did not know her name, not until minutes before his death as I sat with him by his bedside. I had a premonition when he said he was tired that he would be leaving us soon. We always had this special way of communicating without words. I only hope he somehow understood. I must confess that I spoke to him as I sat waiting for him to awaken this morning, telling him of my dreams, my fears, my longings. I told him I loved him. I believe, somehow, he heard, and that’s what enabled him to let go. In spite of the fact that my great-grandparents were divorced, he never spoke ill of my great-grandmother, nor she of him. I never knew why they divorced, only that they both decided it was best for them to separate. That’s what they both said. Actually, I don’t know if they ever divorced. They remained friends until she died of cancer ten years ago when she was seventy-three. He was by her side when she took her final breath. I think my great-grandmother loved my great-grandfather until her dying day and was really distraught when they separated. She never said, but I knew from the way she looked at him that the profound love remained. She once told me that he was father, husband, and best friend to her. After her funeral, he disappeared for a full week and returned looking like some homeless person.
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