were you doing?
And I didn’t want to say anything, because I was scared and I didn’t know what he would do when I told him, but I was more scared about what he would do if I didn’t.
I found Ben Zion.
I started crying again.
I found Ben Zion.
RUTH
My life has been like all the lives, long and hard and full of sadness and confusion and horror, a frightening, difficult dream punctuated by brief moments of joy. And as is the case with all people’s lives, the moments of joy are never often enough and never long enough. They keep me going, the same way a glass of water, or an idea of a glass of water, might keep me going in marching across the desert, except that the desert never ends, it’s many million miles long, and it never will end.
I was born in Israel. My parents had both survived in the Holocaust of the Nazis, being in camps in Poland. My father was a Polish and went in Stutthof, and ended in Treblinka, and my mother, who was a Slovak, was first in Theresienstadt, and later in Birkenau. They met in Tel Aviv in 1949 and married almost immediately. At the time Jews of their ages were being encouraged to be married and starting families in order to further populate Israel. They didn’t love each other truly, but on some level they understood each of the other, understood in ways that other peoples couldn’t. Both of their families had been put to death by the Nazis during the war. Their entire families, parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins, had all been murdered in the death camps. That was the basis fortheir marriage. Their feelings of the extermination of their families.
I lived in Israel until I was twelve years. We had moved to a small settlement near what today is being called Gush Katif, on the southern part of the Gaza Strip. It was attacked by the mujahedeen of Egypt and my parents were both killed. I was in the school when it was happening and found them on the floor of our kitchen with their throats gashed open. Their closest friends had left Israel for living in New York a year before and took me into their home. They were childless and happy to have me with them, and like my parents, they were both survivors. Also like my parents, their marriage was without love and strained, the main common element of them being they had both been in the camps. Also like my parents, they had survived but didn’t live through what had happened to them. They breathed and ate and spoke and went about their lives, but they didn’t live, didn’t truly be alive, because they couldn’t after what they had seen and experienced. Trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live.
They did the best they could with me and I accepted them as being my parents. Like my birth parents, they were being very protective of me, did not trust non-Jews, and were fearful of all the world outside our neighborhood, which was entirely Jews. My adopted father worked as cook in a kosher restaurant, and my mother worked being a laundress. We went to synagogue every week, observed theSabbath, ate kosher, and had a Shabbat dinner every Friday in the evening. We were happy, or as happy as we could be given the course our lives had all been taken, and we did not wish for anything more than what we had. In that way we were gifted. For if one knows nothing about what may be possible in the world, one will not yearn for it or be missing it.
When I finished yeshiva, I went to work with my stepmother being a laundress. I had hoped to be going to college and maybe becoming a doctor or a teacher, but we did not have the money for me doing that. When I was twenty, I started thinking about marriage and hoping for love. I got one of those when I met Isaac, who was to become my husband. He was working being a kosher butcher, and his family was said to be Davidic and had been in America since the early 1900s and owned their own family butcher shop. We met because the restaurant where my
And I didn’t want to say anything, because I was scared and I didn’t know what he would do when I told him, but I was more scared about what he would do if I didn’t.
I found Ben Zion.
I started crying again.
I found Ben Zion.
RUTH
My life has been like all the lives, long and hard and full of sadness and confusion and horror, a frightening, difficult dream punctuated by brief moments of joy. And as is the case with all people’s lives, the moments of joy are never often enough and never long enough. They keep me going, the same way a glass of water, or an idea of a glass of water, might keep me going in marching across the desert, except that the desert never ends, it’s many million miles long, and it never will end.
I was born in Israel. My parents had both survived in the Holocaust of the Nazis, being in camps in Poland. My father was a Polish and went in Stutthof, and ended in Treblinka, and my mother, who was a Slovak, was first in Theresienstadt, and later in Birkenau. They met in Tel Aviv in 1949 and married almost immediately. At the time Jews of their ages were being encouraged to be married and starting families in order to further populate Israel. They didn’t love each other truly, but on some level they understood each of the other, understood in ways that other peoples couldn’t. Both of their families had been put to death by the Nazis during the war. Their entire families, parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins, had all been murdered in the death camps. That was the basis fortheir marriage. Their feelings of the extermination of their families.
I lived in Israel until I was twelve years. We had moved to a small settlement near what today is being called Gush Katif, on the southern part of the Gaza Strip. It was attacked by the mujahedeen of Egypt and my parents were both killed. I was in the school when it was happening and found them on the floor of our kitchen with their throats gashed open. Their closest friends had left Israel for living in New York a year before and took me into their home. They were childless and happy to have me with them, and like my parents, they were both survivors. Also like my parents, their marriage was without love and strained, the main common element of them being they had both been in the camps. Also like my parents, they had survived but didn’t live through what had happened to them. They breathed and ate and spoke and went about their lives, but they didn’t live, didn’t truly be alive, because they couldn’t after what they had seen and experienced. Trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live.
They did the best they could with me and I accepted them as being my parents. Like my birth parents, they were being very protective of me, did not trust non-Jews, and were fearful of all the world outside our neighborhood, which was entirely Jews. My adopted father worked as cook in a kosher restaurant, and my mother worked being a laundress. We went to synagogue every week, observed theSabbath, ate kosher, and had a Shabbat dinner every Friday in the evening. We were happy, or as happy as we could be given the course our lives had all been taken, and we did not wish for anything more than what we had. In that way we were gifted. For if one knows nothing about what may be possible in the world, one will not yearn for it or be missing it.
When I finished yeshiva, I went to work with my stepmother being a laundress. I had hoped to be going to college and maybe becoming a doctor or a teacher, but we did not have the money for me doing that. When I was twenty, I started thinking about marriage and hoping for love. I got one of those when I met Isaac, who was to become my husband. He was working being a kosher butcher, and his family was said to be Davidic and had been in America since the early 1900s and owned their own family butcher shop. We met because the restaurant where my
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