Chapter 10 A Tale of Love and Darkness (10)

He and his wife, Fanny Wernicke (who was inevitably known from the day of their marriage as "My dear Cipolla," or "Mrs. Klausner" to guests), put their Misrinaya's home in Odessa became a sort of social club and meeting place for Zionists and intellectuals.Uncle Joseph always exudes a childlike joy.Even when he speaks of his sorrows, his deep loneliness, his enemies, his pains and diseases, the tragic fate of non-conformists, the injustices and humiliations he has had to suffer throughout his life, he speaks in two round spectacles. Behind the film lies a repressed joy.His demeanor, his bright eyes, his pink baby cheeks radiated a cheerful, optimistic vigor, an affirmation of life that bordered on hedonism. "I didn't sleep a wink all night," he told each of his guests, worried for our nation.The fear of our future, the narrow perspective of our somewhat stunted leaders, weighed on me in the dark, heavier than my own problems, not to mention my pain, my shortness of breath, my terrible Migraine. (If you take him seriously, he never closed his eyes for at least a moment in the early twentieth century until his death in 1958.) Klausner was a lecturer at Odessa University from 1917 to 1919, and later became The professor there. After Lenin’s October Revolution, the bloody civil war between the red and the white made Odessa change hands. In 1919, Uncle Joseph and Aunt Cipolla, together with Uncle’s elderly mother and my great-grandmother Lasha Kela Braz set off from Odessa to Jaffa on the "Ruslan". It was the "Mayflower" of the Zionists at the peak of the post-war third-generation Arya immigration. That year's Kazakhstan Nuka Festival, they live in Jerusalem's Bukhara settlement.

However, my grandfather Alexander and grandmother Shlomit, as well as my father and his older brother David, did not go to Palestine, even though they were also ardent Zionists.Living conditions in the land of Palestine seemed to them very Asian, so they set off for Vilna, the capital of Lithuania.By the time Baba and his parents arrived in Jerusalem in 1933, Werner's anti-Semitism had escalated to violence against Jewish students.My uncle David was a persistent European, and he was slow to act. At that time, it seemed that only my family and Jews like them were left in Europe.The others were Pan-Slavs, Pan-Germans, or just Latvians, Bulgarians, Irish, or Slovak patriots.The only Europeans in all of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s were Jews.My dad used to say: In Czechoslovakia there are three nationalities, Czechs, Slovaks and Czechoslovaks, say, Jews; in Yugoslavia, there are Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Montenegrins , but even there lived a distinct group of Yugoslavs; even in the country under Stalin there were Russians, there were Ukrainians, there were Uzbeks and Chukchis and Tatars, and among them ours Compatriots, true members of a Soviet nation.Now Europe has changed completely, and now Europe is full of Europeans from wall to wall.Incidentally, in Europe, graffiti on walls has also changed.When my father was young in Vilna, every wall in Europe read "Jews go back to Palestine". Fifty years later when he traveled to Europe, the walls shouted: "Jews go back to Palestine".

Uncle Joseph spent many years writing his great tome on Jesus of Nazareth.To the shock of Christians and Jews alike, Uncle Joseph, in this tome, claimed that Jesus was born and died a Jew, never intending to start a Protestantism.Moreover, he regarded Jesus as the most eminent Jewish moralist.Ahad Ha'am implored Klausner to delete sentences like this to avoid a huge scandal in the Jewish world.When the book was published in Jerusalem in 1921, it caused an uproar among Jews and Christians: extremists accused him of "taking bribes from missionaries to sing praises for them"; Asked the Archbishop to fire Dr. Danby, English translator of the book "Jesus of Nazareth" because it was "tainted with heresy, portraying our Savior as some kind of reformed rabbi, Nothing to do with the Jews".Uncle Joseph achieved international fame primarily for this book and its corresponding sequel, From Jesus to Paul a few years later.Uncle Joseph said to me once, "Honey, I can imagine that at school they teach you to hate the pathetic brilliant Jew, I only hope they don't teach you to spit every time you pass him with the cross on his back. When you grow up, baby, read the New Testament, and no matter what the teachers say, you'll find this man is flesh of our flesh, bone of our bones, he's some kind of miracle worker, was a Jewish Pietist, and though he was indeed a dreamer and lacked any political insight, he nonetheless held a place in the Jewish pantheon of celebrity on a par with the likewise excommunicated Spinoza. You know, I am condemned by the narrow-sighted, useless wretch of yesterday's Jew. But you, my dear, must not fail like them, but must read, read, read, and read! Now, please Go ask Mrs. Klausner, dear Aunt Kippola where is my skin cream, face oil, please tell her it's old face oil, because the new one is not even good for dogs. You know, My darling, what is the big difference between what the non-Jewish languages ​​call 'savior' and what we call the Messiah? The Messiah is just the anointed: both priests and kings in the Bible are Messiah , the Hebrew word 'Messiah' is an entirely mundane, everyday word, closely related to the word face oil—unlike the pagan languages, which refer to the Messiah as 'Savior' and 'Jesus Christ'. But you are Is it too young to understand these? If so, run to ask your aunt now what I asked you to ask her for. What is it? I don’t remember again. Do you remember? If you do, let her be kind to me cup of tea, as Raf Huna wrote in the Passover chapter of the Babylonian Talmud, 'whatever the master orders you to do, unless you are ordered to go out', my version is 'unless the tea leaves' .of course I'm just kidding.Go ahead my darling stop stealing my time everyone else is taking my time without realizing that every moment is my personal property and it just goes away After arriving in Jerusalem, Uncle Joseph served as the secretary of the Hebrew Language Committee, and after the establishment of the Hebrew University in 1925, he was appointed as the head of the Department of Hebrew Literature.Before that he had hoped and expected to have him in charge of the Jewish history department, or at least the teaching of Second Temple history, but "the big men at the university, from their German heights, looked down upon me".In the Department of Hebrew Literature, Uncle Joseph felt, in his own words, like Napoleon of Elba, for he was hindered from pushing the whole Continent forward, and on the exiled island he had with a mission to promote some kind of progress and orderly order.It took about twenty years before the chair of the history department of the Second Temple period (536 BC to AD 70) was established, and Uncle Joseph finally went to head the subject without giving up the chair of the Hebrew literature department position. "Absorb foreign culture and integrate it into the flesh and blood of our nation and human beings," he wrote. This is an ideal I have fought for all my life and will never give up until I die. ’” He wrote elsewhere, with Napoleonic passion: “If our nation aspires to rule its own land, then our children need steel and iron!” ’” He would often tell his guests, pointing to the two bronze statues on the living room sideboard — Beethoven, furious and passionate, and Jabotinsky, in his dignified uniform, with his lips tightly pursed: “The spirit of the individual True as national character--both vigorous, both rebellious, free from illusion. "He likes Churchillian expressions very much, such as "our flesh and blood", "human and national", "ideal", "I have spent my best years fighting", "we will not compromise", "to Weak against strong", "Misfit with peers", "Latecomer" and "To my last breath". In 1929, Tara Piut was attacked by Arabs and he was forced to flee. His home, with Like Agnon's house, it was looted and burned, and his library, like that of Agnon's, was badly damaged. "We must re-educate the younger generation," he wrote in When the Nation Struggles for Freedom "We must endow it with a spirit of heroism, a spirit of unwavering defiance... When most of our teachers have not yet overcome the diaspora—whether in exile in Europe or in the Arab countries—then A cringing loser spirit. "

Under the influence of Uncle Joseph, my grandparents also became neo-Zionist Jabotinski, and my dad was actually closer to the ideals of the paramilitary underground and Menachem Begin's Liberal Party.But Begin actually produced more complex emotions in the big-hearted, worldly Odessa Debotinsky, mixed with a certain sense of controlled superiority.Because Begin was born in a small village in Poland, he was easily emotional, so he seemed a bit vulgar or rustic in people's eyes, but he was undoubtedly a brave and firm nationalist.Although he may not be a world-class figure, not quite charismatic enough, not poetic, not great-man, he is high-spirited, somewhat tragically solitary, and has the leadership of a lion and a goshawk.Jabotinsky wrote, "Like a lion facing a group of lions," when talking about the relationship between Israel and the nations after the revival of the nation.Begin doesn't look much like a lion.Even my dad, despite his name Ariyah, which means lion in Hebrew, wasn't a lion.He was a short-sighted, clumsy Jerusalem scholar.He was incapable of being an underground fighter, but contributed to the struggle by occasionally writing English manifestos for underground work, in which he did his utmost to crusade against the cunning and hypocrisy of the "treacherous Albionians."These proclamations were secretly printed and pasted at night by nimble young men on the walls of surrounding residential areas, and even on telephone poles.I am also a child underground worker.More than once I have driven the British out by flanking the English with my troops; sunk His Majesty's warships in heroic naval ambushes; The Hebrew flag was hoisted on the flagstaff at the Governor's Mansion on Malicious Hill (like those soldiers on US postage stamps hoisting the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima).After the british are expelled, I will sign a pact with the conquered treacherous british people and form a so-called civilized and enlightened national front against the (barbaric) oriental wave, with their crooked ancient scripts and machetes , they rushed out of the desert, uttering hideous squawking noises, slaughtering, looting, and burning us.I wanted to grow up like Bernini's David, handsome, curly-haired, tight-lipped, reproduced on the title page of Uncle Joseph's When a Nation Struggles for Freedom.I wanted to grow up as a strong, silent man with a slow, deep voice.Don't be shrill and whining like Uncle Joseph.I don't want my hands to grow into his old lady's soft hands.

My Uncle Joseph was a wonderfully honest man, full of self-love and self-pity, mentally fragile, thirsty for knowledge, full of childlike exuberance, a happy man who always feigned pity.With a certain pleasure and contentment, he liked to talk endlessly about his achievements, his discoveries, his insomnia, his detractors, his experiences, his books, articles and lectures, all of which without exception aroused "Sensation in the world"; and his talks, his program of work, his greatness, his importance, and his nobility.He was once a good-natured man, selfish, pampered, sweet as a baby, rebellious as a child prodigy.There, in what was once intended to be a replica of ancient Jerusalem on the outskirts of Berlin's Gardens, Tara Piut, a tranquil wooded hill where red-tiled roofs peep through the greenery, each villa offered a peaceful and comfortable home to a famous writer or scholar. s home.Uncle Klausner sometimes strolled in the gentle evening breeze along the small street that was later named after Klausner, his slender arms entwined with those of Aunt Cipolla's plump, Kipo Aunt Rabbi was his mother, wife, elderly daughter and right-hand man.They walked in small steps past the door of the architect Kornberg, who occasionally hired cultured and polite tenants.At the end of the cul-de-sac was also the end of Tarapiut, the end of Jerusalem, the end of the settlements from which the forbidding barren hills of the Judean Desert stretched.The Dead Sea shimmers in the distance, like a plate of molten steel.

I saw them standing there, at the end of the world, at the edge of the wilderness, both of them very delicate, like two teddy bears, arm in arm, with the evening wind of Jerusalem blowing on their heads.The pines were blowing, the dry and clean air was filled with the bitter smell of geranium flowers, Uncle Joseph was wearing a suit jacket (he suggested that the Hebrew word for suit jacket should be "jacket bite"), tie and feet. Slippers, gray hair fluttering in the wind, my aunt was wearing a dark floral silk dress with a gray shawl on her shoulders.Above the Dead Sea, the blue mountains of Moab covered the entire wide horizon, and at their feet was the old Roman road leading to the walls of the old city. Before their eyes, the Dome of the Rock turned golden, the cross on the minaret of the Christian Church and the mosque next to it The crescent flag on the light tower is bathed in the afterglow of the setting sun.The walls themselves were becoming gray and heavy, and they could see Watch Hill above the Old City, with the university buildings so dear to Uncle Joseph occupying its top; and the Mount of Olives, on the slopes of which Aunt Cipolla would be buried However, Uncle Joseph himself hoped to be buried there, but he did not get permission, because East Jerusalem would be under the jurisdiction of Jordan when he died.The twilight light made his childlike cheeks and high forehead even more pink.There was a puzzled, bewildered smile on his lips, as if someone knocked on the door of a house where he was a regular visitor and usually received warm hospitality, but when the door opened, a stranger suddenly looked at him. He, recoiled in astonishment, as if to ask, who are you, sir, and what are you doing here?

Mom, Dad and I will let them stand there a little longer.We bid them farewell without saying a word, and walked to the stop of the number 7 bus, which must have been coming from Ramatla Haile and Anona in a few minutes, because the Sabbath was over. The No. 7 bus pulled us to Jaffa Road, from where we took the No. 3 bus branch to Zephenia Street, five minutes from home, and my mother would say: "He hasn't changed. Always said the same thing , same story and anecdote. He's been repeating himself every Sabbath since I've known him." Dad would say, "You're a little too picky sometimes. He's not young anymore, we all sometimes Repeat yourself. So do you.” I mischievously added a line from Jabotinsky: “With blood and zhelezo we shall raise g ezho.” (Uncle Joseph could go on and on about how Jabotinsky Words and sentences. Apparently, Jabotinsky could not find the proper sound for the word geza "race" in Hebrew, so he temporarily wrote the Russian word zhelezo "steel" instead. Hence: with blood And zhelezo / We rise a people / Proud, generous and strong", until friend Baruch Klufnik came along and turned zhelezo into the Hebrew word y eza, "sweat": with blood and sweat / We will raise a nation / Proud, generous and strong". Dad would say to me, "Really. There are some things you can't joke about." Mom said, "Actually, I don't think there's such a thing. No It should be." Dad would interject, "Okay. We're done. That's it for today. Remember, Amos, you're going to have a bath tonight. Wash your hair. No, I won't." Forgive you. Why should you? Can you give me a reason for not washing your hair? No? In this case, if you don't have any reason, it's better never to be stubborn and remember this forever from now on One point: 'I will' and 'I don't want' are not excuses, they can only be defined as self-indulgence. By the way, the word 'definition' comes from the Latin 'end', qualifying', and every next definition is expressed in both draws a line between what is inside the line and what is outside it. In fact it may be related to the word 'defence', which is also reflected in the Hebrew vocabulary, 'definition' (Hagedale) Derived from the word 'separation wall'. Now please clip your fingernails and throw all your dirty laundry in the laundry basket. Your shorts, shirt, and socks. Then put on your pajamas, have a cup of cocoa, and go to bed. TODAY That's it."

Sometimes, after leaving Uncle Joseph and Aunt Cipolla's house, we would stop for twenty minutes or half an hour, if it was not too late, to visit the neighbors across the side street.We sneaked into Agnon's house like thieves, without telling our aunts and parents where we were going, lest they be uncomfortable.When we went to the No. 7 bus station, we sometimes ran into Mr. Agnon coming out of the synagogue.He would take papa's arm hard and warn him that if he, my papa, refused to visit Agnon's house and not let him see the ladies, it, that is to say, Agnon's house, would Missed the opportunity to enjoy her demeanor.So Agnon brings a smile to Mama's lips, and Papa will say yes, "Okay, but only for a few minutes, please forgive Mr Agnon, we can't stay long, we have to go back to Kerim Abraham, The child is tired, and he has to go to school tomorrow morning." "The child is not tired at all." I said.Mr. Agnon said: "Mr. Doctor, please listen, the mouth of a young child proves strength." The face is hidden in the garden.You can see four or five long and narrow windows along the way.You enter through the gate hidden in the cypress wood, walk along a paved path beside the house, climb up four or five steps, ring the doorbell in front of the white house door, wait for the owner to open the door, and wait for the invitation to turn right and climb up the half-black house. up the steps into Mr. Agnon's study.From the study you go to the huge paved roof terrace, which overlooks the Judean desert and the mountains of Moab; otherwise, turn left and enter a small, untidy bedroom whose windows look out onto an empty garden.The Agnon House was never full of daylight, always in some kind of twilight veil, with the faint smell of coffee and cream tea.

Maybe because we only visited in the evening before the end of the Sabbath, at least they didn't turn on the lights until Samsung showed up at the window.Maybe the lights were on, but the electric lights in Jerusalem were so dim and miserly, maybe Mr. Agnon was saving electricity, maybe there was a power outage, and it was just kerosene lights.I still remember the flickering, I could actually almost touch it, the window rails seemed to imprison it and make it stand out even more.The cause of the flickering is difficult to explain now, and even then it was difficult to explain.Whatever the reason, whenever Agnon got up and pulled a book from the shelf, the book, like a throng of admirers, clad in shabby black, and Agnon's figure cast more than one shadow, were two Three or more shadows.This is the impression he left in my childhood memory, and he is still like this in my mind today: a person swaying in the flickering light and dark, with three or four separate shadows dangling around him when he walks, that The shadow is in front of him, to the right, behind him, above his head, or under his feet.Occasionally Mrs. Agnon said something in a dignified shrill voice, and on one occasion Mr. Agnon, with his head slightly on one side and a slight mocking smile, said to her: Be the head of the house. As soon as they're gone, you're the mistress." I remember that line well, not least because of the unexpected slurs it contained (which we now define as subversive). ), and largely because the word he uses for "mistress" is very rare in Hebrew.I came across the term again many years later when I read his short story "The Mistress and the Vendor".I have never met anyone other than Mr. Agnon who used the word "hostess" to express a "housewife" feeling, although when he said "hostess" he didn't mean a housewife but something slightly different .It is difficult to know, after all, he is a person with three or more shadows.