‘Reluctant Heroes’

Roman Ben-Manasseh was in the thick of it by the time his students settled in their usual seats.

 

Class convenor, Adela Sugarman  tried to look confident.

“Rabbi Roman says he’s terrified about what could happen to him and his close friends during Operation Pillar of Defence. But we know he’ll do a better job because of it.”

“He’s such a modest chap,” said Penny Raisman. “He’s already gone through a lot although he’s still quite young. I heard that on top of everything else, he’s volunteered for both the Magen David Adom and ZAKA emergency services since coming to Israel. It’s amazing how much people fit into their lives. I  feel so inadequate.”

“Me, too. Ramon called me a ‘hero’ for emigrating to Israel from the U.S. as a retiree, but I’ve had a really easy time,” said Gus Steinman.

Ramon Ben-Manasseh served as part-time rabbi to the Shaarei Tzedek Congregation in Ashkelon but had been recalled for active duty as a gunner along with thousands of other I.D.F. reservists. In civilian life he made up his income with several teaching jobs and was researching for a  book on the history of the ‘hidden’ Jews of Spain and Portugal.

“That we’re here tonight is a tribute to another of Ramon’s skills,” said Adela, distributing the notes and maps he had left for students’ use.

“It’s great that a native Spanish speaker conveys his knowledge of bible to an English language group so ably.

“Most of you may be unaware that Ramon emigrated here alone  from Argentina in his early twenties after discovering that he came from a family of conversos – Jews who had been forcibly converted to Catholicism.

“In a short time, someone who had barely known he was of Jewish stock became fully immersed in Israeli life. First, he took several menial jobs to eke out his immigrant grants. Then, working with other young people he learned good colloquial Hebrew and Arabic and also improved the English he had studied at school.

“Originally, Ramon had intended to become a secular teacher but began to reflect more upon his Judaism, eventually studying for the rabbinate. But it was by no means easy because he had no paperwork to prove his ancestry.

He underwent a full conversion to Judaism, with a circumcision, via the Conservative movement after his application to the Orthodox authorities was rejected.

“We’re very lucky to have him here,” said Penny, “even for a short time. I think we’re talking about a young man on the brink of a brilliant career.

“I’ve just glanced at his notes for the relevant chapters from the Book of Judges and he’s shown  how the story of Gideon and the battle against the Midianites may be compared to the continuing war of attrition we are forced to fight against our near neighbours in Gaza.”

“Well,” quipped Gus. “The stone jars, torches and trumpets used by the biblical Gideon would be a lot cheaper to use than Bibi’s 'Iron Dome’!

“But as a former teacher, I’d like to add this: the view that ’those that can do, those that can't teach’, has become a wicked modern commonplace. Ramon may be a reluctant hero but it makes him a greater ‘man of valour’ both in the field and  on the battlefront  of education. He is blessed with a rare gift that cannot be acquired but which he has honed and polished to a high degree.

“He’s less than half my age with a fraction of my experience,” Gus continued, “but still I find his sessions compelling – even thrilling. He’s by turn authoritative and funny, serious and engaging. I haven’t studied Torah like this since I was pre-barmitzvah – and then it was just another chore.”

But then Gus looked grave. “If things were different,” he sighed, I’d have introduced Ramon to Eva, my granddaughter. My guess is that they would have liked one another very much.”

“So what’s stopping you?”, asked Penny.

“She’d just started training as a combat camerawoman, able to film IDF operations in real-time, when she was shot dead by a sniper while on exercises in the West Bank. She was terrifically ambitious and had written to dozens of film studios in California and the U.K., in the hope she’d have an internship ready  when she’d completed her service.

“I’m no hero. But my son and daughter-in-law will continue to put on brave faces for the rest of their own lives. Eva had been their only child, born after a struggle with fertility treatment. How do you cope with a loss like that?”

*** This story is dedicated to the young men and women in the IDF. Thank you for looking after us. – N.I.W.

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Reluctant Heroes,Israel,Operation Pillar of Defence,IDF,Film Unit,Women Soldiers,Torah,Book of Judges,Gideon

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 23 November 2012)

 

 

‘A Living Will’

“He that covereth his transgressions shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall obtain mercy.”

‘After I’m gone, say the God I barely recognised  was indivisible; just One.

‘After I’ve gone, don’t recite Kaddish. The dying is for me, not Him.

‘Make the funeral short. Let my body burn. Should these requests be judged thoughtless and unwise, let it be known that I deserve neither prayers,  praise, lies nor crocodile tears. What I did was wrong. You’ll know this, after I’ve gone.

‘Buy less milk and butter. Turn the heating low. Feed the cat. Cut the kids’ hair  monthly, check their homework’s done.

‘Remind them they are Jewish, when I’m gone. When you arrange our son’s barmitzvah, please invite my mum. It’ll please her if you say he’ll be wearing the tephillin once worn by  Uncle Jack.

‘After I’m gone, carry on as normal. Have Janie round for tea. I find your loving comfortable. Let’s not pretend. It’s clear. She’ll be a better mother than I’d ever be.

‘After I’m gone, pin a notice on our door. “This woman,” it should read, “seemed honourable, fair and kind. She was more faithful than her husband, kept a clean house,  gave to charity and taught her children well. But as the final drips of life  seeped from her,  measured by the agonised ticking of the clock, the truth came out. In her dreams, she had killed her father, estranged  her daughter, then waited patiently for oblivion to take her too.”’

-------------

Alan Gershon’s eyes widened as he scanned the letter he’d opened.

“Bea Newman’s gone,” he announced.

“What do you mean? Gone where?”, asked his wife, Noga.

“Sorry! The note I’m reading is from a  Sally Morris, the administrator at The Willows, the hospice in Rainhill Lane. She says Bea died there from leukaemia about three weeks ago and had requested a secular ceremony and cremation. Mrs Morris has also enclosed a so-called ‘living will’ which Bea had managed to scribble about a month before and which she had asked to be sent to me. Here - look for yourself.”

“Hmm,”  said Noga, snatching at the papers. “This isn’t a conventional ‘living will’. Typically, Bea concentrates on practical domestic duties but  makes no mention of medical care or even of a legacy to those who’ll come after. It relates more to her musings on death.

“I didn’t know she’d been  ill but  we’d all lost touch in the past ten years. Anyway, you’ll have to pardon me if I don’t speak too warmly. Bea was a carbon copy of her  dad, ‘Potty Pete’ Blumenthal – a lunatic trouble maker if ever there  was one. This is also just like her – leaving you with the burden of clearing her effects. I bet my bottom dollar she chose you as she still fancied you rotten.”

Alan chuckled despite himself, as Noga continued  her tirade.

“I realise I’m breaking every taboo in the book and that I should respect her passing by reflecting on her positively. But all I can remember is how she abused our hospitality; was forcibly removed from two local synagogues for heckling publicly during services and deliberately caused dissent between  friends with her vicious gossip.”

“I remember,” he sighed as Noga paused for breath. “Yeah, if only she’d stuck to what she did well. At her best – which was at work - Bea was a creative genius and some of her campaign ideas were superb. But too often that same spark became a demonic sprite. That’s why we asked her to leave Raine Rose Communications.”

“But we also know,” said Noga, beginning to read the enclosure carefully, “that Bea was  a deeply troubled and sensitive individual. While most of the details here are invented, she’s sending us a strong, genuine message.”

“Let me have another look,” said Alan. “The wording appears to be based on the traditional Jewish deathbed confession, where the individual  recites the central prayer, The Shema, confirming his or her faith in one God.

“It’s all desperately sad, Noga. It is apparent that she felt she’d been morally rotten and that her horrible illness was its physical manifestation.

“She didn’t want to be offered the regular rituals at death as she considered herself unworthy of them, or even to have a prayer quorum  gather on her behalf to recite Kaddish, the mourners’ prayer.”

“It’s also a cry for help. But it was made too late. I’ll set aside my personal misgivings and suggest we investigate the possibility of a memorial service at the columbarium. One of us could read her ‘will’ and offer an explanation.”

“I suppose it’s possible,” said Alan. “I don’t know how many of our circle would give up their time for such an odd and ‘un-Jewish’ occasion. But you know what they say,” he added, managing another weak smile

“Well?”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” 

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,A Living Will,Death,Confession,Funeral,Cremation,Living Will,Shema,Kaddish

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 23 November 2012)

‘Swan Song’

After the tweeting and twirling, the  party began to swing.

“Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday, happy birthday ...”, chirped Aunt Edie, balancing her oversized cake and its 80 candles on the balls of her elegant fingers.

Two hundred and fifty guests – relatives, friends and acquaintances gathered during a long, sometimes strange life – grinned and applauded with gusto.

“Still bringing the house down,” said Second Cousin George, from Birmingham, England.

“Does she ever stop?”, asked Hennie Markus, a new neighbour in plush Herzliya.

“Not that you’d notice,” retorted Nellie, Edie’s one surviving sister, who lived with her in a state of permanent semi-exhaustion. The pair had emigrated from England twenty years before and loved attending productions staged by  Israel’s major dance companies.

But the Hotel David’s Master of Ceremonies was now calling the crowd to attention.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated. Your hostess and birthday girl, Edie Aaronson – ‘Madam Yenita Aronovska’ - wishes to welcome you.

“Boys and girls,” said Edie. “My speech will be brief as I am making a simultaneous translation from Hebrew into Russian, French, English and Yiddish.

“First I offer thanks to everyone for their efforts in joining me for my birthday – most especially those who have travelled thousands of miles from their home countries for the occasion.

“What can I tell you? Life is not easy. If I had not been ‘spotted’ as a kindertransport child from Vienna, perhaps I’d never have made it to London;  met Ninette de Valois, been accepted for the Royal Ballet, nor had the fantastic fortune to  dance just once with Rudolf Nureyev.

“And don’t think”, added Edie mysteriously, “that the splendid Rudy only loved other men … But tonight may not be the correct time to tell that story, surrounded as I am by my darling great nieces and nephews.”

As Edie ended  her speech, the crowd’s uproarious guffaws melted into stares of startled admiration as she kicked off her slippers and dropped the skirt of her  white and silver feathered gown to reveal a   tutu and a pair of  shapely dancer’s legs beneath.

“See,” she said, hooding her eyes and lowering her voice to a stage whisper.

“This is my birthday surprise to you. The waist may be a little thicker and the bosom rather heavier, but the legs and arms are twitching.

“They insist on performing the final moments of the Odette Variation and Dying Swan.

“This, I remind all dance scholars out there, is not part of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake but was originally a solo choreographed by Mikhail Fokine for the great  Anna Pavlova to music by Camille Saint-Saëns.

“Maestro, please,” she nodded at the hotel’s resident pianist and began performing the steps Pavlova had made so famous.

Some minutes later, the pianist faded the concluding bars as Edie’s ageing swan raised and fluttered its wings one last time before sinking slowly, grandly to the  floor.

But she did not rise and as the seconds ticked past, guests grew anxious.

“I wonder if she’s O.K,” growled George. “I hope she’s not done a Tommy Cooper. He was the British comic who died on stage from heart failure.”

But the  swan overheard him, cocked its head and chuckled.

“Don’t spoil things George, please!,” it scolded. “I’ve planned a much better end to my party than merely dying!”

And even as she spoke, a mass of pink-grey tulle and satin exploded onto the dance floor from the direction of the kitchen.

“Come here. Come to me,” she ordered, throwing her arms wide to encompass  her horde of mesmerised great nieces and nephews.

“Tonight you are my corps de ballet. First though, you must help me get up and although you all look lovely in your costumes,  I won’t ask you to dance.

“Instead you will  serve everyone pudding – a confection of meringue swans on chocolate lakes – nothing better for a fairy-tale ending.

“Please don’t forget,” she added,  “leave some for your Aunt Edie. And after that? Well, I’ll have to wait for someone to name a pudding after me.”

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Swan Song,Ballet,Israel Ballet,Swan Lake,Tchaikovsky,Royal Ballet,Rudolf Nureyev,Ninette de Valois,Odette Variation and Dying Swan,Anna Pavlova,Saint-Saens,Mikhail Fokine

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 09 November 2012)

‘Of Spitting, Swearing And Other Infantilia’

The Truth Hurts

As I was walking through Tzfat, I met a man who sat and spat. It happens in Jerusalem too. Are these Haredim righteous Jews?

The Holy Truth

The holy citizens of Tzfat – Israel’s highest city - were once very poor. They were also  starving. While the adults lived on soul food, mothers made their children soup from herbs and grass they gathered in the hills. Sometimes they even added some spittle to bind everything – just for luck. ‘Toi, toi, toi.’

One day Yosef, the eldest of  Adina Sofer’s brood of ten, said “Eema,  the Almighty has spoken to me in a dream. He wants us to go to Manchester in England  where many pious Jews like us live very well and have plenty to eat. Please take us, Eema,” he begged. So his mother, fearing worse at home, spat three times and muttered ‘toi, toi, toi’ to ward off The Evil Eye.   

Nothing But The Truth

“Yossi Della Reina,” recounted Shimon Alweisz of Holy Land Magic-Mystic Tours, “was a 16th century rabbi in Tzfat who  tried to defeat  Satan by using Kabbalah. But after his attempt failed, he  turned to a life of sin. Worse was to come. When he died, he was buried outside the communal cemetery by his fellow citizens.

“Now,” explained Shimon, leading a group of enthralled American Christians through Tzfat’s best mystic bits, “Della Reina’s burial spot may be seen next to the central square of the Old Jewish Quarter. What’s more, local people still spit at the grave as they walk past.”

“Don’t be silly!” interrupted Ellen, a Tzfat resident who happened to be passing by  and who believed that blunt interference was her religious duty.

“We don’t do things like that in the Holy City of Tzfat.  But carry on – please do,” she added, wiping delicately around her mouth. “Tell the story as you must. If you think it’s good for your business, then it’s good for ours too. After all, a girl’s got to eat. ‘Toi, toi, toi.’”

So Help Them God

The generations following Yosef Sofer grew fond of life in England,  forgetting their forefathers had migrated from Poland to the Holy Land to restore the ancient places. They became lax in their observance of Jewish ritual, neither eating kosher nor kindling the Sabbath lights.

But one day Yosef’s great-great-grandson, Danny realised that his mother’s family name ‘Sofer’ meant he was destined to be a writer. First, he took creative writing and extra English Literature  classes at school where his studies included the works of the metaphysical  poets.

“Awesome,” he said of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet X1 ‘Spit in my face ye Jews’. I know it’s not what Donne was writing about. But it sort of explains why Jerusalem Talmudic students have been spitting at Armenian Christian seminarians. I want to learn a little about Christianity.”

But Anna, his mother, more superstitious than pious, shivered when Danny announced he intended to  visit Manchester Cathedral.

“I think you’ll be the first person in our family ever to enter any sort of church. Go if you must. But be warned – you won’t like it.”

Then she spat three times and whispered "’toi, toi, toi.’”

Danny just wanted to hear a sermon by the novelist, Jeanette Winterson which was part of the annual Manchester Literature Festival. But later he decided his mother had been right.

First, Winterson’s speech seemed oddly like  an article she had written for  The Times newspaper two years before when she somehow equated the State of Israel with terrorist organisations which aimed to destroy it.

Then Danny felt personally hurt that a writer whose work he had previously much admired should use a phrase like ‘But Jesus is no Jewish princess.’

“If I didn’t know better,” he told his friend, Cliff as they left the building, “that woman was being antisemitic.”

“Be careful what you say, mate. But, yeah … my family have been strong Methodists like, er, forever. Even so, some of Winterson’s  remarks made me feel really bad. My parents are always moaning about how spoilt my sister and I are – and they never mention Jews.

“Also,” added Cliff, “this makes me sound a right geek. But I didn’t like hearing her say ‘effing’ during her talk. It’s O.K. when it’s us,  just messin’ about. But in there …",  he said,  swinging round to point at the cathedral, “it’s supposed to be holy. It didn’t seem right for her to use bad language. It stuck out; sort of jarred – didn’t work.”

“Y’mean  when she mentioned ‘… every bit of effing advertising …’? It also gave me the creeps. O.K., I’m not religious and hardly ever go to synagogue. But still I feel upset by that. Bloody hell, we’d have soon been down the cop shop if someone had heard us go on about ‘lessie bitches’.

“Ha! Y’reckon? We wouldn’t say that about anyone - ever. Would we?”

“But it’s made me decide something,” said Danny, now serious.

“I’ll tell my mum she was right about the cathedral – even if it wasn’t for her reason. Then,” he added with a sly grin, “I’ll ask her if she’ n’ Dad will loan me the dosh to get to Israel. To go to Tzfat”

“I love your nerve, going into that war zone. But isn’t Tzfat where Madonna’s been ?”

“Yeah. But it gets better. I’ve never told you before but it seems my great-great-grandparents came to live in Manchester from there. They also say,” he giggled, “that I’m the spitting image of my great-great-granddad. ’Toi, toi, toi.’”

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Of Spitting,Swearing And Other Infantilia,Tzfat,Madonna Jerusalem,Haredim,Armenian Christians,Israel,Manchester,Manchester Cathedral,Manchester Literature Festival,Jeanette Winterson,The Times

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 05 November 2012)

 

 

‘Staying Alive With The Walking Dead’

Prologue

Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp was liberated by British Forces on April 15, 1945. Rev Leslie Hardman, a young Jewish Chaplain, arrived two days later. Sixty-thousand prisoners were found there, most of them seriously ill. A further thirteen thousand unburied  corpses lay strewn around the area, which was dubbed ‘the camp of horror.’

The renowned BBC broadcaster, Richard Dimbleby who accompanied the liberating forces, filed a famous report of the scene. Some of his words are interpolated below.

The intervening 67 years have seen dozens of wars and innumerable  atrocities committed by many regimes in killing fields worldwide.

My ‘factional’ story attempts to show new generations, whom I consider to be unhealthily obsessed with ‘Gothic Horror’, that while the lessons of the Holocaust continue to be studied,  they are never truly learned. 

----------------

Story

Out of the silence came a crazed, wracked voice. But Leslie Hardman did not know it was his own.

“My God, the dead walk!”, his detached voice screeched. “If this is a test from Heaven why wasn’t I set it sooner? Sent here earlier?

“... Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which ... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them …”

But for Rev Hardman, British Armed Forces chaplain, pious Orthodox Jew, there were no  moments to lose. He began work by tiptoeing   around the shards of humanity left by the Nazis at Bergen-Belsen, tending the budding shoots of  springtime liberation he was sowing as he went.

First he gazed upon the “staggering mass of blackened skin and bones, held together somehow with filthy rags.”

Next he tried music. But the words of nascent Israel’s anthem, Hatikva (The Hope) – stuck in a dying woman’s throat. 

Then as the tears welled and the lump in his own throat rose, Rev Hardman laid down his despairing head for relief. But his reverie was brief.

“… Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days …”

“Rabbiner, Rabbiner (Rabbi, Rabbi),” wailed an inmate – a piteous creature who fingered the double star emblem on his military tunic to ensure it was real.

“Let me comfort you as you have heartened us. You are our own Messiah. May God console you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.”

Much later, Rev Hardman would recall how he cherished the terrible moment. “Like everything else about my hours in that wasteland, it was sanctified simply because it was beyond belief.

"If all the trees in the world turned into pens,” he said “all the waters in the oceans turned into ink and the heavens turned into paper, it would still be insufficient material to describe the horrors these people suffered under the SS."

Most difficult was the burial of thousands of  corpses, ensuring they were laid to rest according to Jewish custom with the recital of Kaddish – the traditional mourners’ prayer. 

The dead, said Rev Hardman, must be granted the dignity which they had been denied on earth. What’s more, he insisted, the ‘living dead’ – the survivors – should be given the solace of both witnessing, even helping, to ensure that the work was complete.

"This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.”

Epilogue – 1

‘Closing The Circle’

Somehow, many people managed to secure a semblance of normality after the war. Rev Hardman returned to pastoral work at a London synagogue, but  also performed duties at a local psychiatric unit and on behalf of  the Holocaust Education Trust.

He was a fervent Zionist and one of his daughters settled in Israel. Recently his grandson, attorney Yoel Hadar,  a legal adviser to the Israel  Internal Security Ministry, had a chance meeting with a Belsen survivor,  Mordechai Chekhnover, now aged 88. "This meeting has closed a circle for me," said Mr Hadar.

Epilogue – 2

The debate continues. Some people, like journalist, Philip Hoare believe the fashion for Gothic horror and its ilk “reflects deeper contemporary fears of the apocalyptic and the macabre: of bad science and corrupt power. It reflects dark times, too, and offers escapism from austerity or insecurity – a safe, containable way to be scared. Most of all, perhaps, it addresses dark themes of psychosexuality.”

I don’t believe the problem’s that profound. I suggest it means that creative writing is at a troubling watershed and that even the world’s best writers are finding themselves unable to create believable three-dimensional characters in life-like situations.

Now I feel angry enough to discuss it in public  after spotting a ‘conversation’ between prize-winning novelists, Margaret Atwood (Canada) and Naomi Alderman (U.K.) who are collaborating in writing The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home, an online serialised novel  being  published in 13 instalments from now until January  next year.

I have decided not to treat readers to the contents. But I will add this:

By an uncanny  co-incidence Ms Alderman’s father, historian Geoffrey Alderman, wrote an obituary to Rev Hardman when he died, aged 95, in October 2008. The rest, I venture, must revert to silence.

 

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Alive With The Walking Dead,Holocaust,Bergen-Belsen,Rev Leslie Hardman,BBC,Richard Dimbleby,Philip Hoare,Margaret Atwood,Naomi Alderman,Geoffrey Alderman,Gothic Horror,Zombies

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 02 November 2012)