This afternoon, I had lunch with Tova and then we spent a few hours recording conversations for my project. It's turning out that she's more interested in talking about her experiences with the Pentecostals and the question of conversion than getting into the post-Holocaust Jewish identity question, and that's fine with me. I will write about whatever she talks about. This material certainly fits into the interests of the Center for Religion and Culture (the organization that gave me the grant), and the actual proposal was deliberately open-ended, so it will work out fine.
The bad news is that Tova is sick again. She's seemed in pretty good shape the whole time I've been here, but today when I got to her apartment she was obviously exhausted, very winded, and extremely hoarse. She takes breathing treatments every hour or so, and since she has a nurse who lives with her in the evenings, she's got someone to help her out when she gets tired. She couldn't stand up for too long, but she insisted on cooking me lunch. There is no refusing Tova. We just have to joke about it. "I'm very Polish," she laughs, "so sit down and I will cook lunch." I know that she is often very lonely, and it has been a real pleasure for her to have me here and coming around all the time. So I'm not going to ruin it by arguing with her, or condescending. She can make her own choices.
I did, however, ask her if she thought it was a good idea to go to Poland on Friday in this condition. "I will go to Poland," she said. "I will die if I can't go to Poland." She is scheduled to see her doctor on Wednesday, and I think she is secretly scared that the doctor will advise her not to go. She told me, "You know, I have been trying to get there for so long, it's just pulling me there. I have to go. I have to go." I wondered but did not ask if Tova imagines that this will be her last trip to Poland, and if she doesn't go now, she will never have another chance. I think this trip, this journey to the last place she ever knew her family, means far more to her than her health ever could. I am honored to be going with her.
We talked today some about her life in Oswiecim, what her parents were like, how she thinks they never liked her because she was a "rebel from birth." We looked through some of her paintings, and amidst the canvases I found a large oil painting that I recognized from a photograph I had at the Jewish Center in Oswiecim, a picture which is also enlarged and framed on Tova's coffee table. I pulled out the painting and asked her about it. I noticed that her sister was missing from the painting, and her brother, who was not in the photograph, had been added. She had told me at length about her struggles with her sister after Tova discovered that her sister had survived the camps and was living in Germany, and I was curious why she had been deleted from the only existing photograph of Tova's entire family (minus Tova, who was in Israel, and the extra brother). It wasn't because Tova was cross with her when she painted it, only that the painting represents the family she lost. Since her sister was still alive, she didn't belong in the painting.
The Wolf family (l-r): Samuel, Halina, Golda, Rozalia, Hilek, and Jehuda. This photo was taken in 1938, shortly after Tova emigrated with her husband to Palestine.
Tova with the painting in memory of the family members who perished in the Holocaust.
Part II
After I left Tova's (she was standing in the hallway declaring, "I will go to Poland!" as the elevator doors were closing), I had planned to go see a movie at the cinematheque. I had checked the website and seen that they were playing a film about two Israeli young women in the military ("Close to Home"), and it would be subtitled in English. Several people at home had told me how great this movie theatre is (one professor described it as "paradise"), so I was looking forward to checking it out. When I went to buy the ticket, though, the girl in the box office informed me that there would be no English subtitles. I said, "But it says on the website that there will be, are you sure?" She was unmoved. "The website is wrong. No English."
So I turned around to leave, but the guy behind me in line stopped me to ask in Hebrew-accented English, "Didn't I see you at a German wedding yesterday?" I told him I thought not. He said, "But I'm sure I did. Why aren't you seeing the movie?" "No English subtitles," I answered. Every time I took a step, he followed. "But what is your native language?" he asked. "English," I told him. I was starting to get aggravated, and I was already disappointed that I wouldn't see the movie. "Well it's a beautiful film and you don't need language, you can just see the pictures," he said. "I don't want to see just pictures, I want to see a movie and understand what's going on, and now I have to go," I snapped, walking toward the door. He followed. "Wait! I can translate it for you!" he cried. "No!" I cried back. "No no no! I have to go! Thank you! Toda! Shalom! Goodbye!" And I left the theatre. I felt sort of rude, but I mean really, this guy wouldn't give up. (It wasn't a dangerous situation, by the way; there were plenty of people around, and he was more of a moron than a menace.)
I walked out of the movie theatre and headed back to my hotel. I noticed that the Menachem Begin Heritage Foundation was still open and I had never seen it, so I stopped in. It was a very nice museum, but after about five minutes of following signs and knowledgeable-looking people, I couldn't find the entrance to the actual exhibit. It was a labyrinth in there. It was very nice, and obviously a lot of money went into the structure, but all the signs inside were either incorrect or purposefully playing with my head, and there was no one around to ask since it was getting close to closing time. I decided that a foundation that would choose such complicated architecture didn't deserve my attention, and anyway, Menachem Begin was a bit of a terrorist at one time, so I left.
Back in my room, I was determined to find something to do, so I poked around on the internet and found the program for the Israel Festival, a summer music and performing arts festival in Jerusalem. There was a concert that looked interesting - a series of short animated films set to music with a live orchestra - so I set out again. I found the theatre, wandered around the stalls set up outside, and made sure to get inside well before six to get my seat. I shouldn't have worried, since people trickled in until around 6:20 and the show didn't get going until 6:30. The show was interesting, even though the director (or someone) kept giving long talks in Hebrew between sections. There were also some weird modern dance numbers and excruciating modern vocal selections. The films themselves were neat. One of the last ones was a dark tale about a squirrel family dealing with separation when the mom and dad squirrel (but not the kid) get called up to Noah's ark. It was well done, but a little hard to take since they were, after all, squirrels.
After the show, I took a cab back to the German Colony, looked around the shops (everything is open late here, and Sunday is like any workday), and picked up some dinner. While I was waiting in line, I scanned the menu and spotted salami, so I thought, great, this is not a kosher deli. When it was my turn, I ordered a turkey sandwich on rye with cheese. The guy looked at me like I was crazy. "We don't have cheese," he said. "Why not?" "It's not kosher," he answered. "I know that, but you have salami!" I said. He picked up the package of salami (on which was written, "KOSHER") and said, "Of course we have salami!" Now I was completely confused. "How can salami be kosher?" I asked. "How can it not be kosher?" he replied. The it occurred to me that this is probably beef or turkey salami, and so of course it's kosher. Meanwhile, the woman next to me who can understand this entire exchange is completely cracking up. The guy asked, "What is salami made of where you come from?" I answered confidently: "Pork!" But now I'm wondering, is that even right? Isn't salami made out of pork? It was all in good humor, and we moved on to making my dinner of a turkey sandwich on rye (no cheese).
Note: it's not that cheese itself is not kosher, but it is not kosher to mix milk and meat, so if there's a deli serving meat, there won't be cheese around anywhere. This is why lots of very observant Jewish families have two sets of pots, dishes, silverware, etc. - it is proper to keep all things milk- and meat-related absolutely separate. Other things that aren't kosher: anything related to a pig, shellfish, gelatin, cheeseburgers and anything else that mixes meat and dairy.
So those are the tiny details of my Sunday in Jerusalem. Tomorrow I have some plans, and Tova is meeting with a filmmaker who wants to make a movie about her. We leave on Friday morning (actually, Thursday night at 2 a.m. - she made this plan, not me!) for Poland, where I'll stay with friends from the Jewish Center and attend the opening of Tova's exhibit in Krakow on Wednesday evening.
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