Akiva became a home away from home for us. My brother and I would go off in the morning and come back in the evening with a new feeling of being part of a group united by shared values. Young people of our age who were religiously inclined probably experienced this sense of union with others during religious services, but we did not have that. At the traditional age of thirteen we observed the bar mitzvah rites—I do hope you know what those are, the celebration of coming of age—but it did not not make a great impression on me or my brother. It was just something that was done. Our mother wanted us to remain within the tradition.
The Akiva activities expanded our cultural horizons. Our parents’ ideas about life struck us as provincial. They were concerned only about their daily bread, and it seemed to us that our teachers were bearers of higher values.
My brother and I longed to emigrate to Palestine, a prospect our parents viewed without enthusiasm. They felt too old for such feats of heroism as cultivating new lands. We could see for ourselves that they were too old for that kind of radical change, and had no wish to leave them without support in their old age. In any case, we had no money. At that time the British authorities were allowing Jewish immigration within an annual quota, but required a financial surety from those entering their mandated territory. Young people under eighteen years of age were not charged for the certificate, so the door was open for me and my brother.
In 1938 we had the idea that one of us should go, the other staying behind to look after our parents. One of the alternatives we discussed was for Daniel to go and study at Jerusalem University. Given how successful he was proving, it was not a bad idea, but that, too, required a financial outlay. Although the certificate would be free, the fare to Palestine was expensive and there were also tuition fees to be paid.
My brother in any case had a full year of study ahead of him, and he was already seventeen. At this point my mother’s sisters decided to collect the necessary money to support their nephew. The hat was passed round the family. He worked exceptionally hard to pass his exams as an external student and gained his school leaving certificate a year earlier than his classmates.
One life ended and another began, but it was not the life everyone was looking forward to. On first of September 1939 Germany began its occupation of Poland.
MILKA. Can you not talk and eat at the same time?
AVIGDOR. I have already finished!
MILKA. You may have, but Ewa’s plate is still full!
EWA. Tell me how you met up again. How many years was it since you had seen each other?
AVIGDOR. Eighteen years, from 1941 until 1959. How we met? I was waiting for him in the port from early morning. I deliberately went on my own. Milka was about to have Noami, and Shulamita was very little. Ruth wanted to come but I told her to look after her mother. She was the oldest, eight years old, but I wanted our first meeting to be just the two of us. To tell the truth, I did not trust myself not to cry. We had been writing to each other such a long time, since 1946, and had said a great deal in those letters. My brother had not even known then that our parents had died in 1943. There was a lot I found puzzling. Why had he not started looking for them the moment he got back to Poland? I don’t understand. He had decided of course that they could not have survived, and that if they had they would only try to talk him out of his Catholicism, which he had already decided on, so he didn’t even try to trace them. It seemed an odd logic. He only started looking for me one year later. A friend of ours had found out where he was and tried to rescue him, without success. But after that? I simply had no wish to return to Poland, and he could not just come to Israel as a visitor. Being a monk is worse than being in the army. Soldiers do at least get leave or have a fixed term of service, but there was no end for Daniel. He was running all over the place with that Cross of his … I don’t even want to remember it. I’ll show you the cemetery later. That is a whole other story.
Anyway, there I was waiting for the steamer. There were not that many other people. Even then Jews were arriving by aeroplane, only a few came by sea. The steamer arrived from Naples. I had noticed among those waiting one person wearing a soutane and immediately guessed that my brother was being met. Finally they lowered the gangway and people started disembarking. Tourists, of course. Still I could not see him, and then my brother appeared, in a soutane, wearing a cross. I was not expecting anything different—I had known for thirteen years that he was a monk—but I still couldn’t believe my eyes.
Daniel did not notice me immediately. He was looking in the crowd for whoever was meeting him, and already that person was heading his way. I ran toward my brother, wanting to get to him first. He went over to that person who had come to meet him, they exchanged a few words, and I saw Daniel turn to me. “I will stay tonight with you, and go to the monastery in the morning,” he said.
We hugged. Oh, my blood! Still that same familiar smell of the man I knew. He had a little beard. I had never seen him like that. He was nineteen when we parted, and here he was a grown man. I thought, too, that he had grown very handsome. What are you laughing at, Ewa? Of course, I wept. I thought it was just as well I had not brought my wife. You fool, I thought. What a fool I am! Who cares if he is a priest? Who cares if he is the Devil incarnate? Why am I holding on to him so? All that really matters is that we’re both alive!
We got into the car and drove off. He read all the road signs and kept gasping. We came to the fork in the road where one arrow points to Akko and another to Megiddo and he said, “My God, where am I? Thirty-five kilometers to Armageddon. Do you see that?” I replied, “Dieter, I see it very well. Milka’s friend lives there, we go to visit her.”
He just laughed. “Megiddo! That doesn’t mean anything in any language in the world except Hebrew!” he said. “Let’s go there!” At that point I started recovering my wits and protested. “No,” I said. “The whole family is at home waiting for you. Milka has not been out of the kitchen for two days.” He was suddenly very still and asked, “Do you know what you just said? You said the family is waiting for me. I never thought I could have a family.” I said, “Well, who else are we to you? You don’t have any other one. That’s what you chose.”
He laughed, and said, “Okay, okay. Let’s go and take a look at this family then.” So I didn’t drive him off anywhere else, we drove straight home. At that time, Ewa, we didn’t live in the house we are sitting in now. On this same plot of land we had a little house without any amenities. It is still here, but only as an outbuilding now, directly behind this house. All our children grew up in it. In the 1950s our cooperative was not doing very well. It was really only from the early 1960s that everything took off. We had one of the best cooperatives in the whole of Israel.
Daniel and I got home and Milka and the children rushed out. Our little girl gave him a bouquet. What kind of flowers can you find in July? They are all long since withered. Shloma, our neighbor, had gone eighteen kilometers that morning to a flower farm and brought tulips, our flower. Do you think King David was singing his Song in the Bible about some other flowers? My girls crowded round him and I could see everything was fine. Of course he had that Cross hanging on him, which was odd, but I could put up with that. In Akiva we were taught to be tolerant of other faiths. I have been living so many years here with Arabs, and they are Christians, too. Did you know more of the Arabs here are Christians than Muslims? It is only lately relations have become tense. Before that we had many Arab workmen. One boy, Ali, lived with our family. He was older than our children. Of course, he has gone now …