It was beyond all comprehension, I thought. How does He manage to trace billions of people in His charge and billions of billions of souls of the deceased? Our Earth, the Planet of Life, is most likely not the only one. I squinted, trying to imagine the universe, the Milky Way, and the galaxy. I lost count of the numbers, got confused about the number of zeros after the number one. I became dizzy and felt like a tiny particle of this infinite world, created by someone else, swept up in motion…
…Truly, only the One who has unlimited unimaginable power that cannot be measured by any of the means at the disposal of a human mind could become Creator and then Master of the Universe.
The clinking of plates brought me back to earth, to our living room. That was my wife Svetlana, who was busy in the kitchen while we indulged in devout thoughts. Svetlana got it more than any of us. The week of remembrance was the week of taking care of us, of uninterrupted chores for her, and that was apart from her usual responsibilities as a wife, mother and working woman. Customs…
As evening arrived, Emma and I went out onto the veranda. What could be more beautiful than an autumn evening? The wind had brought coolness and the delicate fragrance of flowers whose petals still shone through the greenery. The crowns of trees, still green, were painted gold here and there as nature prepared to change its attire. Silence… the deep silence of evening… a confluence of beauty and sadness. “A dreary time! And yet – enchantment for the eyes!” Mama had chosen the proper time to pass away.
But autumn was also a special time, a very important time for Nature. Autumn was the season of transformation, preparation for the severe trials of winter.
We people are an integral part of nature. We live in rhythm with it. But were we ready for our transformation, for the forthcoming trials after the loss of our beloved?
The transformation of my soul began. How would I cope with it?
Chapter 21. Is it Easy to Be a Jew?
No, it’s not. I’ve known it since childhood. I knew it not through hearsay. I knew it through personal experience. But only now, after Mama’s death, did I understand the full extent of what it meant to be a Jew. And it didn’t come easily, though for quite different reasons. Now, no one insulted my ethnic (or religious) dignity. Now, I myself was learning how to behave with dignity – in accordance with rules and customs that the Jewish people have known since ancient times.
I had arrived at that decision – to be precise, the decision hit me, for I had no doubts about it – for two reasons.
The first reason – I felt and knew that Mama would want it that way now. Now and then, she would drop a “When I am gone…” She, who had grown up with Jewish traditions, would be pleased if her son expressed the grief of his loss the way it was ordered in religious laws. To do what Mama wanted me to do – how else could I have expressed my love for her?
The second reason – I felt the need of it. Was it the call of blood? Was it a hope of finding help and consolation? I didn’t know. Most likely it was both.
The first week of mourning, the one relatives spend at home, was over. The Shloshim, literally “30,” began. In other words, those 30 days when men didn’t shave or cut their hair, and, even though they went back to work, they prayed in a synagogue every morning and evening. Mourning for parents, including visits to the synagogue, lasted for a year.
I don’t want to pretend it was easy for me – I was alarmed, I was tense, and not because of changes in my everyday life. The forthcoming emotional changes were to be much more difficult.
To go to the synagogue twice a day, in the morning and evening, seven days a week for a whole year only for decorum, for the sake of being seen there, to go as a not-very-industrious student goes to school because he has to… and pretends to be listening while exchanging remarks with his classmates? No, that was not what I wanted. And I knew that it wouldn’t be that way. I knew that I would go to the synagogue with an open heart. But would my heart take in what I would hear there? Would it take it in truly so that it would become mine? That I didn’t know. My very limited experience didn’t console me with an answer.
I was very lucky to have Uncle Avner by my side during the first week of my new religious life. It’s always easier when a close relative is by your side. On top of that, Uncle knew Jewish rituals quite well and had always observed them. That could be said of all Central Asian Jews, particularly those from Bukhara. Unlike Jews who lived in Russia, the Jews of the Central Asian countries always respected ancient customs and religious tenets. No matter how poor a family was, they always tried to give their children at least some Jewish education, at least teach them to read Hebrew, to learn to pronounce words correctly. That’s how both my grandfathers, Hanan and Yusup, were raised. But it was only Grandpa Hanan who handed his worldview and knowledge down to his son, Uncle Avner. Unfortunately, Grandpa Yusup didn’t raise his children the same way.
"Don’t worry," my uncle reassured me on the way to the synagogue. "Don’t worry, it’s not difficult. You’ll get used to it in a week or two."
But I worried. And I had the feeling that I was entering the synagogue for the first time and saw everything differently.
There was a small area surrounded by wooden railings in the middle of the spacious hall, with the platform, bema, inside it. The Torah was read from that platform. The Torah was kept in the sacred ark, Aron Kadesh in Hebrew, covered with a heavy curtain, ptih, on which a crown and an inscription in Hebrew were embroidered. A few rows of benches for worshippers were arranged along the three sides of the hall. We sat down on one of them.
The praying had already begun. It was the time of the Jewish holidays, abundant in the fall. Praying in the synagogue during the holidays begins long before sunrise, at five in the morning. It was easy to tell us from everyone else by our unshaven faces as people observing mourning. That was most likely why one of the worshippers, a tall bespectacled young man approached us. He, like everyone else, was wearing a tallit, a large white shawl with black stripes. The tassels, tzitzit, hung from its four corners, the purpose of which was described in the Torah – after looking at them people would remember God’s commandments.
"How do you do, I am Sholom. Are you mourning?" The young man whispered. "I hope your deceased has a place in Heaven prepared."
After expressing his condolences, he offered to get prayer books for us from the shelf.
"Please, one for me in Hebrew, and one in Russian for my nephew," Uncle Avner requested.
I was holding a siddur, a prayer book in Hebrew with a transliteration, a text in Hebrew printed in Russian letters. It was a small, thick book with snow-white pages, thin as tissue paper.
"Here… Listen and follow," Uncle said after opening the siddur to the proper page.
At last, after I concentrated, I heard the voice of the chazan who was reciting the prayer. Like the rest of us, the chazan was standing on the platform with his face toward the Aron Kadesh. But even if he had turned our way, we wouldn’t have seen it since his tallit covered him from head to foot.
I heard the voice of the chazan, and nothing could distract me from listening any longer. He was reading. No, it was difficult to call it reading. It was a real song. And what a song! It was prolonged and melodious. It grasped and fascinated you. It was filled with profound, powerful feeling that captivated one's soul. Strangely enough, even though I didn’t understand the words, their meaning somehow affected me. They blessed, glorified, honored, gave hope, begged for forgiveness. Now pain and penitence, now joy and exultation could be heard in them. My eyes perused the lines. However, it was not the words but the chazan’s voice that filled me with the prayer, and his voice continued to flow. The chazan was swaying to rhythm of the words, and the hem of his tallit stirred, swayed and gleamed like light waves. It suddenly seemed to me that he was standing not in the bema but on the bridge of a ship that was about to tear itself away from the smooth surface of the water and rise to the sky, to the One who was there… on the throne, visible… or invisible, incomprehensible, in space. How dare I imagine it this way? Well, one imagines Him the way one wants, the way one has been used to since childhood. And I… I felt Him… it was a connection between Him and me… and here was our ship that was flying, flying to Him. And everything we experienced, everything we thought about, asked, hoped for, everything our prayers were filled with – all that was flowing to Him.