{"id":16681,"date":"2014-07-04T11:47:13","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T17:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=16681"},"modified":"2014-07-04T11:47:13","modified_gmt":"2014-07-04T17:47:13","slug":"a-visitor-from-amerika","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/a-visitor-from-amerika\/","title":{"rendered":"A visitor from Amerika"},"content":{"rendered":"

By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Ted_Roberts\"

It was almost like a shiva – a shiva walk instead of a shiva sit. Amerika? He was going to Amerika – a land of Goyim? A land even farther than Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, the destination of a few adventurous Grinz emigrants earlier. Who knew where they ended up – a shipwreck and a watery ocean grave or maybe an Arab bullet and six feet of Jerusalem earth marked by a crude Mogen David?<\/p>\n

The minute they stepped on the train they were as dead to the eyes and ears of Grinz as the prophets who endlessly jawed about the covenant – the ketubah between Jew and G-d that promised us a land of milk and honey. A fine covenant, we kvetched. We end up in Grinz.<\/p>\n

But this rash departure was certainly the end of Josef, we thought. Didn\u2019t the Grinzer Rebbe say never to run from a Cossack\u2019s blows – while he\u2019s chasing you he\u2019ll pick up three friends to beat you worse.<\/p>\n

Amerika!\u00a0Unlike the spies that explored Canaan and returned with fruits of the land, no one until now had come back to the old country. Oh, there were letters from the emigres full of bubbermeisers<\/em> about jobs that allowed even an uneducated Jew to afford a warm bed and plenty of food for supper.\u00a0But above all this, boasted the new Americans, here was a nation that was governed by the Law.\u00a0This law protected all, even a poor Jew who could speak only Yiddish.<\/p>\n

In the courtrooms the truth was respected.\u00a0Oaths were taken on a Hol\u00a0\u00a0book that contained our Torah.\u00a0In these courtrooms the testimony of the Czar would have no more weight than the janitor at our synagogue.\u00a0That\u2019s what the letters said.\u00a0But a letter was a cheap thing costing two zlotzkys.\u00a0Who knew the fate of those who left before Josef?\u00a0\u00a0Maybe their Shabbos meal was cabbage soup; their home a doorway.\u00a0And maybe their letters were all lies.<\/p>\n

But Josef, like the scouts of Canaan, had returned.\u00a0Had he arrived in Grinz naked, bony, and shivering with hunger, his presence alone would have shouted of success because the steamship fare was 60 rubles, not to mention the train fare from Odessa to Raskow and then a wagon ride from the train station.\u00a0He took the wagon just like the District Commissioner.\u00a0\u00a0You could tell.\u00a0\u00a0He didn\u2019t muddy his shoes and cuffs of his pants.\u00a0\u00a0Two more rubles.\u00a0\u00a0And look at that suit – like from a fancy shop in Warsaw.<\/p>\n

All that afternoon and into the night and the next morning our friend\u00a0\u00a0told us of the New Jerusalem.\u00a0We ate and drank well.\u00a0We had saved up for Josef\u2019s homecoming. The Rebbe was there, too.\u00a0\u00a0He took his place of honor in a\u00a0\u00a0chair with a cushioned seat next to Josef.<\/p>\n

There was even honey cake covered with plums for dessert as he told tales of a shining New World.\u00a0And there on the table where we sat was a jug of vodka.\u00a0We listened as closely to our spy from the Promised Land as a good Jew listens to a scholar explaining Torah. Many of those whom we had invited to the reunion crowded along the wall and leaned forward.\u00a0\u00a0Eyes and ears as close to Josef as possible so they wouldn\u2019t miss a single word.<\/p>\n

This boy who had left two years ago was now a man.\u00a0We were children of the Old World.\u00a0He was now a man of the New World.\u00a0Our eyes had never witnessed the wonders that Josef spoke of.\u00a0The trolley cars that ran on rails in the street.\u00a0The water that came out of a pipe in the house.\u00a0Hotels with dining halls offering all manner of foods.\u00a0Machines that plowed and sowed and reaped the earth outside the cities to provide an abundance of foods for all.<\/p>\n

And police who only struck and detained criminals.\u00a0But the Cossacks, what about them, any Cossacks?<\/p>\n

\u201cNot one,\u201d he said.\u00a0Not in the city – not in the fields around the city.”<\/p>\n

Oh, how we talked.\u00a0Almost to sunrise.\u00a0Josef, the next day, called upon all his old friends.\u00a0And he was generous with his American dollars.\u00a0He stayed a week – only left yesterday.<\/p>\n

Naturally, we all walked the two miles to the train station just as we had two years before.\u00a0Life is a series of farewells as we are told.\u00a0So Josef leaves.\u00a0We stay.\u00a0Here nothing changes.\u00a0Pesach still comes every Spring around seedtime.\u00a0We sow and reap, over and over like the turning of the earth beneath our feet that we hardly notice.<\/p>\n

Mostly it\u2019s a quiet life.\u00a0Oh, there\u2019s talk of war between the Fascists and the Communists, but such rumors have no reality in our modern age of 1939.\u00a0\u00a0And who takes notice of a shtetle full of Jews beside the Warsaw to Moscow highway?<\/p>\n

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