The Story of a Life (22 page)

In 1967, on the eve of the Six-Day War, the club was again thrown into turmoil. Some members who hadn’t spoken for years, or had barely spoken, now warned of an impending catastrophe. But most members disagreed. “You can’t compare what was then to what’s now,” they claimed. “Now we have an army, and it’s going to smash the enemy.”

I was called up for reserve duty, and club members vied with one another excitedly to show their support. People pushed banknotes into my pockets, and one of the less popular members (in part because of his miserliness) actually took off his gold watch, gave it to me, and said, “In my name and in the name of my family.” Later I learned that this watch had belonged to his brother, who perished in Auschwitz.

Now I knew that the club was my home. All the criticisms and petty complaints that I had harbored disappeared; it was as if they had never existed. I felt the members’ warmth and devotion, and I left for the army full of faith in life.

The period of waiting before the war actually began was long and hard. When I returned to visit the club during one of my leaves, I noticed the ghosts that had again emerged from the shadows—places that had not been mentioned for years were now being brought up again, deportations were again spoken of, together with
Aktions
, and trains and forests.

The optimists tried in vain to calm people’s fears, but these were deep-seated fears and they brought to mind images that were hard to obliterate. Even strong people confessed they could not sleep well at night. Some asserted repeatedly that it was all our own fault, brought on by our character flaws. If the whole world is against us, they argued, it must mean that there is something bad inside us. Even having our own state and army hadn’t improved us.

When the Six-Day War was over, there was elation; people spoke of miracles and spiritual renewal. One survivor who had become rich in America came to Israel and donated
a considerable sum of money for us to build a new wing. The club, which had started out in an old building consisting of two rooms and a simple kitchen, expanded upward and outward. Now there was a library, a reading room, a lecture hall, a lounge, and a cafeteria that served sandwiches, soup, and excellent coffee.

The 1960s were good years for the club. There were study groups on the Bible and “Ethics of the Fathers,” and many Yiddish lectures. Books arrived from America and from Canada, and the library rapidly expanded. A professional librarian was brought in from the National Library to teach our librarian new classification methods. Our librarian, who before the war had been a teacher at a Jewish high school in Lemberg, rejoiced over each and every book. The library even boasted a few valuable first editions in leather bindings, which became the pride of both the librarian and our club.

After the Six-Day War, there was the feeling, perhaps because of the physical expansion of the club, that Eastern European Jewish culture had found a good home here, and that the intentions of the Evil One, may his name be erased from history, had been thwarted. The poet S., a well-known figure, wrote an enthusiastic poem entitled “Continuity.” He read it aloud in the cafeteria one evening, and everyone identified with it.

But there were also unpleasant incidents, dark spirits in the shape of informers. One of the informers provided the income-tax authorities with a list of members who traded in foreign currency, which set into motion an investigation that rocked the club. This gave rise to all kinds of suspicions and bitter arguments. They finally pointed to one man, K., a modest person with a pleasant manner who owned a little haberdashery. He claimed that he had no connection whatsoever with the tax authorities, that this was purely malicious and vindictive slander, and that the evil instigator would have to
answer for his false accusations. But these arguments in his own defense were to no avail; they merely increased the hostility toward him. In the end, a general meeting was called and, by a majority vote, it was decided to suspend K. from the club. At the conclusion of the vote, K. shouted, “You’ll have to account for this in the next world. There, not one of you will be acquitted.”

While he was still shouting, almost in mid-sentence, the guard grabbed him and threw him outside.

THE 1970S WERE somber years for the club, and not only because of the Yom Kippur War. Some of our most prominent members passed away, and some were put into far-flung old-age homes. The club, which in the past had been filled with people, emptied out. Its activities continued as usual, and a Yiddish study group was even started for the young people. But overall enthusiasm had waned. No longer was there talk about publishing new books, a newspaper, or a quarterly. Much was said about the next generation’s not knowing anything about the Holocaust and not wanting to know. Some blamed themselves for not telling their children what they really should have told them. But there was a not insubstantial group that argued against the pessimists with all their might, reproaching them and blaming them for spreading negativity.

Right after the Yom Kippur War, there was great concern that if Yiddish literature was not translated into Hebrew it would eventually be lost forever. And so two members left for America, Canada, and Argentina, in order to raise the money to hire a team of translators to translate works of literature from the
mamaloshen
into the language of eternity. The fund-raising campaign was only partially successful.

In 1974, the actor R. arrived from America together
with his sister and his two nephews, also actors. They were immediately made to feel at home in the club. R., a cut above the rest, loved his fellow Jews and their mother tongue. In his youth he could have been an actor in the Polish theater or, later, in the American theater. Theaters all over the world courted him, but he stayed loyal to his native language and to his sister and his two nephews. Together they traveled from place to place, giving performances. Since the end of the war, he had become quite fanatic in his devotion: he would perform only in Yiddish plays.

As soon as R. and his family arrived, they staged
The Dybbuk
and other classics of the Yiddish theater. Besides being an excellent actor, R. was also a remarkable speaker. America, he maintained, was a land of false values. Only in Israel could Jewish culture be born anew. To everyone’s delight, not only did Holocaust survivors come to his performance, but young people as well. The club celebrated late into the night. The cafeteria was full to bursting.

During the 1970s, I struggled hard against the emergence of childhood memories that I had buried for years, while also struggling with the form of the novel. These were the years during which I wrote, among other books,
The Age of Wonders
and
The Searing Light.
I would read passages from these books to the club’s librarian, who was well versed in modern literature and sensitive to words and their nuances. He taught me an important lesson in the difference between the essential and the peripheral. The university is an important institution of learning, but it’s not a school for writers. Literary development takes place through internal conversations, or in conversations between you and those who are your spiritual soul mates. The librarian knew me better than I knew myself.

He knew what bothered me in a text even before I
could point the spot out to him. He always found the hidden flaw. It was strange: we never spoke about content. His belief, like mine, was that the choice of words, the composition of sentences—the narrative flow—are the heart and soul of a work; the rest comes by itself.

During the early 1980s, there was still more thinning out at the club. Power struggles, however, did not let up, even though it was obvious that the veterans would not be able to hold on for much longer. The time had come for those who had been children during the Holocaust to fill the leadership positions. And yet the old board still managed to publish two thick memorial albums, and R.’s theater troupe staged two new performances. But looming over everything were the voluble complaints of the cafeteria manager, who said that the daily proceeds were negligible and threatened to leave if he was not given a subsidy. The veterans reminded him that in prior years the cafeteria had been so profitable that he had been able to build himself a fancy home. But the cafeteria manager replied that he had built his house with his own hands, brick by brick. Had he been dependent on the money he had earned from the cafeteria, he would have still been living in a hovel.

By the end of the 1980s, very few original members were left, and there was great concern about the library and the artifacts in it. Some members suggested turning the place into a synagogue where daily classes would also be held, but the atheists who had been members of the Bund and the rest of the left-wingers were totally opposed to this idea and threatened to enlist the help of their friends abroad. It was a stormy argument. Eventually the matter was dropped.

Around that time the board decided to resign, and a new administration was elected. On the new board were survivors who had been children during the Holocaust and who
didn’t remember a lot about it. They didn’t even remember their parents. When they arrived in Israel they had avoided the club and even scorned it, but when they grew up they understood that, even though they had been children during the war and did not recall very much, they still belonged to the club.

The ceremony marking the handing over was emotional. Obviously close to tears, two members of the departing board talked about the place that this home had filled in their lives and in the lives of all its members, about the activities that had been held there during the past forty years, and about what they had planned to do but could not accomplish. The executives of the new board were more restrained and did not speak for long. One of them, however, revealed that he was only three when the war broke out. His parents had handed him over to a convent, and there he had grown up. There were no other children at the convent, and for years he was afraid that he would remain a dwarf. The nun’s reassurances that he would eventually grow up and look like everyone else there did not allay his fears. “I cannot remember my parents,” he added, “or my home. Had not the Mother Superior written down the names of my parents, I wouldn’t even have known that.”

He concluded with a strange comment: “Orthodox Jews discovered me after the war, took me from the convent, and brought me to Israel. I don’t want to speak ill of anyone, but I’ll just say that my life with them was not a happy one.”

There was a deafening silence in the hall; we all sensed that removing him from the convent had shattered his life and that he had never healed.

The new board did not have an easy time of it. The veterans were constantly trying to undermine it, raising counter-proposals at every general meeting, pointing out its mistakes, claiming that its executives were not true Holocaust survivors,
that they had been children, and that because children did not remember, it was as if they hadn’t been there. The new board was ready to tender its resignation, but there was no one to resign to.

Activities at the club continued to dwindle. The actor R. and his troupe fell afoul of the Israeli cultural authorities and returned to America—but not before they had caused a scandal. They publicly called Israel “a land that devours its inhabitants, full of vulgarity and devoid of culture.”

To its credit, the new board did try to breathe new life into the club. Schoolchildren were brought in, and the veterans told them about their experiences during the war. Even a few tourist groups from abroad were brought to the club. The cafeteria manager once again threatened to close the place down if he didn’t receive a subsidy. The board placated him with a generous sum.

But despite all the renewed efforts and the contributions that kept coming in, the debts continued to pile up: expenses were greater than income. At the end of the 1980s, the general membership decided, though not by a large majority, to sell the building to the Sha’arei Hessed Yeshiva, and with the money received to pay off all the accumulated debts. If any money remained, it would go toward publishing more memorial volumes.

Thus the life of the New Life Club came to an end. There were those who congratulated the board on the deal, and there were those who, without mincing their words, berated it. The board had seen to it (it was also stipulated in the contract) that the library and the room containing the Judaica collection would be closed until we decided what to do with them. The memorial plaques put up in memory of the donors would not be removed by the new occupants, and there would always be a memorial candle lit in the entrance-way. The agreement did not take effect immediately—there
were sticking points on both sides—but eventually the contract was signed.

Ever since the club closed, I have avoided the street where it used to be. I think that part of me still lives there. One of the club’s veterans, a man with whom I loved to play chess and whose stories about his life during the war I loved to hear, said this: “Better a yeshiva than a billiard club. In a yeshiva at least they pray and pore over the old books.” I didn’t know if this was a complaint or a coming to terms.

With the closing of the club, I lost a home. But I still keep up with some of the members. Some write me long letters—part monologue and part criticism of my new books, and naturally filled with advice—but this can’t compare to the evenings we used to spend over a chessboard or at a game of poker. During a game many things would become apparent about the players: who is trustworthy and who cheats, who behaves nobly and who is a lowly hypocrite.

I spent many hours over the chessboard with Hirsh Lang, one of our most delightful members. An expert player, he would bring great passion to each game. Hirsh had the naïveté of a child, but he was a magician at the chessboard. His games sparkled with clever ploys, innovations, and surprises. He would sometimes play simultaneously against seven or eight people—and win, of course. When he won, a shy, almost childlike smile would spread across his face. His personality and his character emerged only during his game. He was not at all well spoken, and whenever he was addressed he would blush, stutter, and with great difficulty put a few words together.