Another Jewish baby boy was born in Jerusalem recently.
Having one child and two grandchildren born in Jerusalem after making aliyah 17 years ago this month, while it’s no less significant, this baby is not related to me. So, if he’s not my son or grandson, why am I writing?
It’s an “only in Jerusalem story” to be sure, and a story that’s come full circle.
The baby is the first of a new generation of Israelis in his family. His uncles and aunts were born in Israel, but the baby’s father, Daniel, was born in Moscow not that many years ago, but in a different era. So much so, that even though the baby’s father immigrated when he was a baby himself, where they (and we) are today is not to be taken for granted, considering where he and his parents came from.
When I was in my teens, I read about Daniel’s father, David, from an article in Hadassah Magazine. My mother was a life member, so there was always a copy floating around. I learned that as a teen himself, David went through tremendous struggles to maintain his Jewish identity in the USSR. If evidenced only by one thing, his commitment to being a Jew and living a Jewish life was extraordinary: David insisted that he have the brit milah (circumcision) that he never had as a baby, then, before his bar mitzvah.
That’s commitment. But it was also a struggle. Early on, David was a pioneer of the “Second Generation” Refusenik group, young men and women whose parents had been refused permission to emigrate. Now, as adults themselves, they had also applied, and were refused permission to leave the USSR as well.
Anna was another member of the Second-Generation group which, in her case, was Third Generation. David and Anna married and struggled together so that their future, and that of their children, would not be dictated by the circumstances of their past. Being a discriminated minority prohibited from emigrating from Russia to Israel is not exactly the kind of legacy one is thrilled about passing along to one’s children.
On my second trip to the USSR in 1987, I visited David and Anna, and their families. We spent time together the first day of my trip, and two and a half weeks later on the last day which happened to be Simhat Torah. Despite the oppression, I had never felt such joy and freedom outside the Moscow synagogue that night, rubbing elbows with the who’s who of Soviet Jewish activists. As we departed to go in our respective directions, I took off my long black wool coat and gave it to David, who was afraid I’d get sick. He said that he didn’t need the coat himself, but said he’d sell it on Moscow’s thriving black market in order to buy much needed supplies for the community. Other than bringing gifts and encouragement, we became good friends. We learned that we shared the same birthday.
David and Anna became parents before realizing their dream to make aliyah. A baby is a blessing, but now the prospect of raising another generation of refuseniks loomed as a dark Soviet cloud. Eventually, they and Daniel were given permission to emigrate. Our next reunion was in an Israeli absorption center in 1989. That’s where I met Daniel, a cute chubby baby with dark hair and bright eyes, and a bright future to look forward to even though he had no knowledge of how or why.
DAVID, ANNA and I stayed close over the years. They visited me in the US. One time, on a speaker’s tour for United Jewish Appeal, David stayed with me, and I tied a tie for him so he could look the part that the American Jewish audiences would expect, even if he was a former Soviet and new Israeli Jew.
When my wife and I visited Israel in 1994 with our first child, naturally we visited David and Anna. There we learned about the Israeli culinary staple, pashtida. Eventually, we made aliyah too. Several years ago, when they arrived at the wedding outside Jerusalem of my daughter, the same one they had met in 1994, I looked around the room and was overcome realizing that other than my brother and sister-in-law, they were the people in the whole room who knew me the longest. Longer than even my wife.
Around the same time, Daniel married Zohar. This month, they became parents to Nevo.
David and I used to debate “Who is a hero?” I posited that he was, because he chose to identify as a Jew and struggled against the Soviets with no little personal risk involved to maintain his identity, and fought to get out. He said I was the hero, as an American Jew who could have assimilated and not cared particularly much about Soviet Jews or Judaism at all. In his eyes, I not only chose to do so, but spent the prime years of high school and college raising money and awareness to work on their behalf, visiting the USSR rather than going on spring break.
Now, David and Anna’s first grandson, born in Jerusalem in Hadassah Hospital (connected to the magazine in which the relationship began), is fulfilling the dreams of many who never got to realize their struggle to come home to Israel. When I went to send David congratulations, I got really emotional. I started recording a voice message. No sooner had I started that my voice cracked, and I began sobbing, overcome that now my friend is also a “Saba,” and overwhelmed by the emotion of generations coming together in Jerusalem.
David and Anna’s grandson, Nevo, entered the covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob this week. It’s an experience he won’t remember as much as when David did it as an adolescent. But doing it in Israel, now as a second-generation native Israeli, has tremendous extra meaning.
While we may disagree over which of us are the true heroes, now it doesn’t matter. Both of our grandsons, born in Jerusalem at the same hospital, will grow up to serve our people, and be the real heroes, even if they are too young to know it yet.