This morning I came to Grandma’s, knocked on the door, Shulamit (Shulamit, Grandma Yochaved’s assistant) opened the door. She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, her hands were wet from the laundry in the boiler. Shulamit returned after a week at the convalescent home in Zichron Ya’akov, with her Aharon who will live. come baby come, how are you, did you come to visit grandma? good boy! and went back to stirring with a stick the sheet and the float inside the big boiler that stood on the Primus.
Shulamit returned after a week at the convalescent home in Zichron Ya’akov, with her Aharon who will live. come baby come, how are you, did you come to visit grandma? good boy! and went back to stirring with a stick the sheet and the float inside the big boiler that stood on the Primus
And the smell of the flakes of laundry soap melting in the boiler in the heat of the primus fire below, mixed with the smell of the golden and almost burnt butter, in the pan on the stove, in the small kitchenette.
I love the matzah flour fritters Shulamit makes for me, with sugar and sour cream.
What do you really have, grandma? I wanted to ask and I didn’t dare. And you sighed, asking me to give you the glass of water that you left last night on the bedside table when you went to sleep. You opened the blue vial, took one pill, sipped from the glass, and swallowed. And then sigh: oh kiss, broken heart.
״Hanani, I hope you don’t take the ‘research’ matters to heart, between grandparents, because a lot of things are wrong, on all sides.”.
This is what father writes in a letter he sends me from his place of residence in New York, in the early seventies.
My father, Azaria, Azariahu as recorded on his identity card, was born on May 13, 1924, the eldest son of the pioneers of the Third Aliyah, one of the first children of the “White City”, Tel Aviv.
What do you really have, grandma? I wanted to ask and I didn’t dare. And you sighed, asked for the glass of water that you left last night on the bedside table, opened the blue vial, took one pill, sipped from the glass, and swallowed. And then sigh: oh kiss, broken heart
When he finished elementary school, he sailed on the ship “Tel Aviv” in April 1936 from the port of Haifa with Noah, his father’s cousin, to visit David Shmuel, his father’s wealthy and childless brother, Eliyahu. Shmuel lived with his wife Fani in Kovna, the capital of Lithuania, and suggested that Yochaved and Eliyahu leave 12-year-old Azaria at their home so that he could study there at the local gymnasium. Yochaved wanted her beloved son to receive a Russian education like Yochaved his mother, even at the cost of being away from home from mother, father and the four-year-old Mala that he loved so much.
Excerpt from a letter that a 12-year-old father writes to his parents during the voyage from Haifa to Trieste, April 1936
Azaria lived with his uncle and aunt in Kovna for about six months, studied English and playing the piano with private teachers, traveled with his uncle and aunt to the spas of Europe, spent time with other relatives, ate three good meals a day and gained weight, which disturbed his mother’s rest.
In one of the letters he asked you not to worry, since he does sports and is five centimeters taller, and in general the weight in Kovna is different from the weight in Tel Aviv. He wrote in one of the letters he sent from Kovna that his heart aches for the longing of his four-year-old sister. Towards the end of the year, he went back to Israel by train to Italy and from there he sailed back to Tel Aviv by ship. Longing brought him back home.
A page from a letter from Azaria in Kovna, June 2, 1936
Noah, Eliyahu’s cousin, who accompanied Azaria from Tel Aviv to Kovna in 1936, lost his wife and child who were murdered in 1941 in Riga. He himself was sent to the Buchenwald camp, where he was murdered in 1945.
Noah, Eliyahu’s cousin, who accompanied Azaria from Tel Aviv to Kovna in 1936, lost his wife and child who were murdered in 1941 in Riga. He himself was sent to the Buchenwald camp, where he was murdered in 1945
Azaria returned to Tel Aviv and graduated from the Balfour Real Gymnasium in Tel Aviv in 1940. When he turned 18, he hurried to volunteer for the British Army, the 2nd Hebrew Battalion of the Jewish Brigade, and went as far as Egypt.
His mother, Yochaved, had only a few years earlier been ready to part with the boy in favor of the gymnasium in Kovna, perhaps because she remembered that her parents had sent her away from the family in Bialystok in order for her to study at the Russian gymnasium in Ukraine, and she wanted the boy to receive an education that Tel Aviv could not guarantee him. But now, when he joined the British army, she felt that she could no longer face the threats of wars, disturbances, death, the mysterious disappearance of her brother. Yochaved once again felt that her world had fallen on her.
Lieutenant Kind, her beloved son, took the knapsack and left with the regiment for the western desert. Only the younger sister remained at home. Yochaved ran to the authorities and tried to arrest the boy. She explained that she was sick and needed him by her side – and was left with half her lust in her hand.
“The boy” was not allowed to continue with his friends to Italy, where his friends from Tel Aviv fought – his uncle, Yitzhak’la and Yaakov, but he did not return to Israel. Grandma was left with only the pictures again.
(Clockwise), father Azaria with his mother Yochaved, father with his sister Leah (Lilik), and father in the uniform of the British Army in Egypt (photo: courtesy of the family)
Dad didn’t forget.
And grandma fell asleep again.
Lieutenant Kind, her beloved son, took the knapsack and left with the regiment for the western desert. Only the younger sister remained at home. Yochaved ran to the authorities and tried to arrest the boy. She explained that she was sick and needed him by her side
In distress, Yochaved wrote to her father, Rabbi Zvi Larinman in Jerusalem, and asked for his advice.
״Talk to the boy, I ask, try to influence him not to join the army. I am not able to go through a time of war again when my eldest son, my treasure, is not with me. I can’t be left alone with ten-year-old Leah. And Eliyahu is again between jobs.”
And Yochaved’s father replied to her in a long three-page letter, in Hebrew and in capital letters, asking how she was and wishing her a speedy recovery, but as a matter of fact, he didn’t really have anything to say.
“In every generation our brides stand against us and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from them. And in our day, have we not seen the wonders of the Creator of the 7th century [יתברך שמו] And exalted be He, who did with us in Kermanchog that we saved from the claws of predatory animals, and he saved me from the hands of the wicked in the house of my brother Haim, peace be upon him, and they did not harm us, God forbid.’
It was not in the power of the grandfather to dissuade the eldest Azaria from joining the Israeli warriors who went to the Western Desert.
״I took his younger sister Lea, who was only 10 years old at the time, out of school. I wanted you to be by my side, someone to help me at home every day, and she helped me. A little shopping, a little laundry, brought me the newspaper, turned the light on and off and prepared my meals, everything I couldn’t do on my own because of the illness that fell upon me when my Azaria went to the army.’
Leah did not forget her mother the injustice she caused her, until the day she died.
“I took his younger sister Leah, who was only 10 years old at the time, out of school. I wanted her to be by my side, someone who would help me at home every day, and she helped me.” Leah did not forget her mother the injustice she caused her, until the day she died
And Grandma Yochaved was lying in her bed, listening to classical music, hugging one of the books she had brought in the small suitcase – the books she had as members of the family, and images from her other life, of Yulia Grigorovna, flashed through her mind.
Yulia Yochaved closed her eyes and saw Yehuda, her elder brother whom she loved so much, who went out to defend the Russian “motherland” and was washed away, drowned, buried and disappeared in the waves of the revolution of 1905. She remembered the others who were lost in the atrocities of the October Revolution, and in the Great War. Grandma was afraid of losing Azariahu as well.
Grandpa used to go to work in the morning at the offices of the time Israeli cotton company. And she, Yochaved, would talk to herself repeatedly and remind herself how difficult it was for her to assimilate in Palestine.
You had a fever, Eliyahu would remind him, the job you arranged for me in the sewing room was difficult for me. You promised to get me a clerical position in the government, but I didn’t know Arabic. And I even dreamed of being a teacher, like at home. After all, I gave up a respectable position in Grodno.
You told me that we would move to the big city and be close to the family, mine and yours, uncle Yehuda, grandfather Zalman and aunt Hana. Azaria was born, and I sank into sadness. The longing for my parents was great. To the sisters and brother who stayed there.
On the radio in the living room, she would hear the hard news from Europe, not knowing what happened to the family members and friends who remained in Bialystok, Kremenchug and Grodno, the apartment troubled her and gave no rest to her aching soul. She had rheumatism. Her soul weakened, and the bed was her refuge.
Grandma closed her eyes and saw Yehuda, her beloved eldest brother, who went out to defend the Russian “motherland” and was washed away, drowned, buried and disappeared among the waves of the 1905 revolution. She remembered the others who were lost in the wilds and the Great War and feared losing Azariahu as well
״Dad asked me to write to you, so yesterday when I came back from the base, I brought grandma the medicine you sent her from New York, the pyrovanzamine״.
Every once in a while you would send her a small transparent brown glass jar of pills with couriers. We didn’t really know what this pyrobenzamine did, but we laughed every time that name came up.’
You wrote to me:
״Since she is doubly sensitive, even the tone in which you ask her, already seems to her like an interrogation between two and a half” and “she is being judged”. What to do? As long as we can help – we try. When you can’t help, you should at least not take it to heart, because it’s a shame for your health״.
So I gave up.
Grandma was lying in bed listening to classical music on the Alef network. She asked me to sit next to her and eat the pancakes. Grandpa was no longer at home.
Told me that Dr. Kuhn called, who made her the prescription for the valerian drops. I promised to drop by him at the clinic next to the zoo in the afternoon, pick up the prescription, and on the way back see Chapsanzon, who would make her the potion.
And Eliyahu, an exile in his country, would get up in the morning and sit until noon with his daughter, eat and go down to rest in his apartment. They called it a parter flat then. And after the rest he goes up again and sits in the living room, drinks a cup of tea with cookies and watches TV, a children’s program and then news in Arabic. Dozing in the armchair until the dinner he will have with his dear daughter and little granddaughters. Together they will watch the edition of “Looking for News” after which he will go down to his room for a night’s sleep.
״Since she is doubly sensitive, the tone also seems to her to be an investigation of two and one evening.’ So I gave up. Grandma was lying in bed, listening to classical music on the Alef network. She asked me to sit next to her and eat the pancakes. Grandpa was no longer at home
One winter night in January 1972 I brought her to the hospital for the last time. Diabetes finished her.
Father only arrived for the funeral. Grandpa too.
Yochaved Rapoport’s obituary