and taken his wife and children for a week to Kerch. So Tankilevich had the table to himself. Moshe Podolsky, the elderly Nahum Ziskin, and Nahum’s son Pinya were at the other table, nearest to the bimah, from which the Torah was intended to be read. To their right, on chairs positioned against the wall, in an approximation of a separate section, were Manya Grinblatt and Shura Feyn.
Golden light poured into the room through four tall arched windows on the opposite wall. In this light—and in the light of his imminent leave-taking—the prayer room and its occupants were nobly cast. The shabbiness that marked the rest of the building and the neighborhood was not to be found here. The mahogany tables and chairs were sturdy, built for epochs. The bimah and the ark beyond it had already withstood the darkest times. Somehow they had been rescued from the conflagration. The bimah—a raised platform and table—was lacquered black wood with flashes of gold. The ark was the same, gilded and carved, its doors concealed behind a burgundy velvet curtain trimmed, tasseled, and embroidered in gold. Above hung two crystal chandeliers. The walls were whitewashed, the room clean. And of his companions, awashin this light? History had laid its heavy hand on them, but they had burrowed, eluded, resisted, and remained. One needed only to look at their faces—expressive Jewish faces—to see that they had known the depths of life. Let no one say that he lacked feelings for these people and this place, Tankilevich thought. Neither was he deserting them. Deserting them for what? He would be the one with the void in his life.
Moshe Podolsky was jabbing the air with his finger as Tankilevich lowered himself into his seat.
—This, this is precisely why I left that country! Podolsky declared.
Tankilevich immediately grasped the substance of the conversation. Israel. His blood quickened.
Podolsky, in his olive army cap, had risen from his chair to more emphatically make his point to the two Ziskins and the women who followed the discussion from their places along the wall. A minute turn of his head, and Podolsky now included Tankilevich as well.
—What do the Arabs do? They throw rocks. They attack innocent women and children. They shoot rockets. If they pay a few shekels in tax, where does the money go? To their crooked Palestinian officials, who, if such a thing is possible, are more corrupt than our Ukrainian ones. Meanwhile, the Jews pay money to the state. In Israel, they pay taxes, and from America they send how many millions. And what does the state do with this money? It commands Jewish soldiers to evict Jews from their homes.
—Of course, Nahum Ziskin said, it’s only in Israel if a Jew builds a house it’s a crime.
Even more than the prayers, Tankilevich would miss suchconversations. With whom else could he speak this way? In Yalta, surrounded by goyim, he could talk like this only to himself. To speak like this even with Svetlana was to stir up turbulent feelings.
Podolsky, born Mihail but reconsecrated as Moshe, had lived in Israel for three years in the late 1990s before returning to Simferopol. His reasons for returning, Tankilevich still found murky. Podolsky ascribed his departure to his frustration with the state, its pandering to the Americans and the Arabs at the expense of the Jews. Was this reason enough for a person to leave a country like Israel and return to one like Ukraine? But Tankilevich, given his own biographical infelicities, did not pry. In this country, at this point in time, a man was entitled to his secrets, his fabrications. If Podolsky gave as his reason for leaving the ideological incongruities between himself and the state of Israel, then it was best not to scrutinize too closely. If it seemed odd that Podolsky, still ardent in his Zionism, when restrained from living in Judaea or Samaria, had opted for Simferopol over Jerusalem or Haifa, it was best to regard this as no more than a personal
Golden light poured into the room through four tall arched windows on the opposite wall. In this light—and in the light of his imminent leave-taking—the prayer room and its occupants were nobly cast. The shabbiness that marked the rest of the building and the neighborhood was not to be found here. The mahogany tables and chairs were sturdy, built for epochs. The bimah and the ark beyond it had already withstood the darkest times. Somehow they had been rescued from the conflagration. The bimah—a raised platform and table—was lacquered black wood with flashes of gold. The ark was the same, gilded and carved, its doors concealed behind a burgundy velvet curtain trimmed, tasseled, and embroidered in gold. Above hung two crystal chandeliers. The walls were whitewashed, the room clean. And of his companions, awashin this light? History had laid its heavy hand on them, but they had burrowed, eluded, resisted, and remained. One needed only to look at their faces—expressive Jewish faces—to see that they had known the depths of life. Let no one say that he lacked feelings for these people and this place, Tankilevich thought. Neither was he deserting them. Deserting them for what? He would be the one with the void in his life.
Moshe Podolsky was jabbing the air with his finger as Tankilevich lowered himself into his seat.
—This, this is precisely why I left that country! Podolsky declared.
Tankilevich immediately grasped the substance of the conversation. Israel. His blood quickened.
Podolsky, in his olive army cap, had risen from his chair to more emphatically make his point to the two Ziskins and the women who followed the discussion from their places along the wall. A minute turn of his head, and Podolsky now included Tankilevich as well.
—What do the Arabs do? They throw rocks. They attack innocent women and children. They shoot rockets. If they pay a few shekels in tax, where does the money go? To their crooked Palestinian officials, who, if such a thing is possible, are more corrupt than our Ukrainian ones. Meanwhile, the Jews pay money to the state. In Israel, they pay taxes, and from America they send how many millions. And what does the state do with this money? It commands Jewish soldiers to evict Jews from their homes.
—Of course, Nahum Ziskin said, it’s only in Israel if a Jew builds a house it’s a crime.
Even more than the prayers, Tankilevich would miss suchconversations. With whom else could he speak this way? In Yalta, surrounded by goyim, he could talk like this only to himself. To speak like this even with Svetlana was to stir up turbulent feelings.
Podolsky, born Mihail but reconsecrated as Moshe, had lived in Israel for three years in the late 1990s before returning to Simferopol. His reasons for returning, Tankilevich still found murky. Podolsky ascribed his departure to his frustration with the state, its pandering to the Americans and the Arabs at the expense of the Jews. Was this reason enough for a person to leave a country like Israel and return to one like Ukraine? But Tankilevich, given his own biographical infelicities, did not pry. In this country, at this point in time, a man was entitled to his secrets, his fabrications. If Podolsky gave as his reason for leaving the ideological incongruities between himself and the state of Israel, then it was best not to scrutinize too closely. If it seemed odd that Podolsky, still ardent in his Zionism, when restrained from living in Judaea or Samaria, had opted for Simferopol over Jerusalem or Haifa, it was best to regard this as no more than a personal
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