The Watchmaker's Daughter: A Memoir (12 page)

Soon, too, I would leave Yeshiva Soloveitchik and transfer to a modern Jewish academy called the Ramaz School. I would take a bus that sped me out of Washington Heights, past Harlem, and onto the splendor of Fifth Avenue. And just before this transformation, as the ultimate celebration of my brother’s Bar Mitzvah, my family took its first plane trip abroad. It took us almost a solid day as we stopped in London, Rome, and Athens, headed for the Promised Land!

Israel was a young country then, not much older than my gangly big brother. It stood on shaky colt’s feet, and our joy in it was innocent. Everyone on the El Al plane sang newly minted Israeli songs, clapping their hands like schoolchildren. When we stepped out, we descended a ramp, blinking into God’s white hot eyes, and then we kissed the dusty, precious ground. Every second was significant with millennia of meaning. My parents’ eyes were as bright as children’s, and I remember feeling a deep sense of relief.

Despite my enjoyment of school, by the age of ten I was feeling such an ineradicable, exhausting sadness that strangers would say, “Hey, are you okay?” I often, unwittingly, looked as though I were about to cry. My posture was increasingly slumped, and I sighed a lot. Six million Jews had died, and this knowledge increasingly weighed me down. Day and night, I thought of it; day and night, I wanted to figure out why it happened and what could be said or done to make things right again.

Here in Israel, I felt my burden lightening. Being here was healing; it was God gathering us together again, as He had always promised. It was a place for all the Jews who had had nowhere else to go. At that time, I believed that only by the prayers of six million sacrificed souls did God finally grant the wishes of his people and give them back their long-lost homeland. Their souls were now the wind at our back, our luck and our new future.

We traveled to my uncle Israel’s house—that was his actual name. One of my mother’s distant cousins, Israel had left Europe a decade before the Holocaust as a pioneer. He lived in Tel Aviv, then a sleepy metropolis where every few blocks you could buy fresh squeezed, slightly warm grapefruit juice—
mitz eshkoliot
. Here, people spoke Hebrew and Yiddish. And everybody looked like my father and mother—down to the socks with sandals and the straw hats that both my father and mother wore in the summer. His was a fedora (with a small feather); hers, a broad sunhat, dainty string tied under the chin. Aunt Ruchama looked like my mother—bright-cheeked and maternal in her cotton flower shift. Though a distant relative, and by marriage at that, she was the first “auntie” I’d ever known.

Shortly after our arrival, I developed a fever, and Ruchama offered to take care of me. As my parents and brother went off on their first day of touring, she settled me on the sofa with a pillow behind my head and another under my knees.

Uncle Israel and Auntie Ruchama lived on the ground floor of a simple, square, three-story building made of dusty white stones. Through open doors of green plastic I saw a cool veranda and heard the sweet sound of birds twittering. There were sprinkles of sand on the white paving stones; we were close to the Mediterranean. A little palm’s leaves waved, and near it, a long table held an enormous watermelon. Ruchama noticed me gazing outdoors, and said:

“Now I am going to do something really special for you. I am going to make it cool and beautiful, like Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden)!

“Do you like Gan Eden?”

“Ken!” I responded in Hebrew. Yes!

She put one slow fan on my right, and one on my left. The air was fragrant with flowers and salt water.

Then she went to the veranda and brought in the watermelon, which she called
avati’ach.
She ran into the kitchen, and a few minutes later ran back with a plate full of watermelon slices.

“They look like smiles, Auntie,” I said.

“Of course, they are smiles,
motek sheli,”
she answered. My sweetness.

The next day, Ruchama announced: “Now, you are going to have a real treat. Ice caffe!”

Disappearing again into the kitchen, she emerged with a tall glass filled with coffee, ice, and vanilla ice-cream.

“It’s good, no?”

“Metzuyan!” Excellent.

These two words, “yes,” “excellent,” were the first I spoke in this ancient language in the place where it had first originated. Israel was only a teenager, not much older than my brother and I. Everyone spoke this biblical tongue in everyday life, no matter where they had come from. It was a Babel in reverse, language embraced as a form of salvation.

Coming back from his first tours of the Promised Land, my father beamed with pride. “I have never felt so good,” he said simply. “Everyone here is a Jew like me, even the policeman and the farmer!”

Much of Israel had long lain fallow, arid and dusty, and where it had not been dusty, it had been ridden with malarial swamps. In Jerusalem, ancient Hebrew graves had been trampled, holy places defiled. (We still could not go to the Western Wall of the Temple; it was not open to Jews.) It had been like a spurned bride. And now, as the prophets had promised, it had been loved, and tilled, and prayed over, and danced upon to the sound of tambourines. Once again, it was green and fruitful, and flowing with milk and honey.

This hopeless wilderness, from which we had been banished for nearly two thousand years, soon led the world in its production of citrus fruits, of flowers! Kibbutzim were full of orange groves, and people from all over the world came to help us pick them. The soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces—imagine, a Jew able to defend himself—were young and strong, tall and olive-skinned, macho and handsome. Even the girls seemed to have muscles and military postures, though their eyes were full of life and mischief.

I could see this for myself. My uncle drove us around in his Deux Chevaux, wearing the short-sleeved shirt every Israeli man wore, even the president. Elbow hanging out the car window, suntanned and casual, he honked his horn indiscriminately to move the sluggish traffic, or to say hello to someone he knew. Everyone knew one another. It was a big Jewish party, a party of survivors.

I thought of the pilgrimage holidays we learned about in school—Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. How thousands had once thronged together, bearing harvests, goats bleating (like the cars did now)—and how it must have felt to live as a Jew in those days. I was Eve, thinking of Eden—and I was in Eden. In yeshiva, we used to recite the old verse: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let me forget my own right arm.” Every Passover, we prayed (as did generations before us): “Next Year in Jerusalem!” And now we were here.

I looked at the arms of many of the Jews here. Working, driving the bus, handing me an ice cream or falafel in pita, so many of these working arms were covered with tattoos from Europe, numbering them for a mass grave. How amazing that they had managed to escape to this land of sunshine, watermelon smiles, and ice caffe. My parents’ nightmare was over, I hoped; all would be good from now on.

A Small Celebrity

I
N A JERUSALEM PARK, an incredible thing happens. My father and I enter the cool green groves, full of royal palm trees, tropical bushes, and waves of pink-red bougainvillea. My mother and brother, just behind us, are buying fresh, foaming grapefruit juice from a street vendor at the entrance. My father is dressed like a free man on vacation—in a patterned short-sleeved shirt and belted, beige Bermuda shorts. Before Israel, I had never seen him step outside without a suit and tie. I, too, am wearing shorts, yellow, with a lime-green shirt and summery white sandals. Wiggling my toes in the soft air, I exhale with happiness and a sense of relief. Everyone is relaxed in my family. Time stands still amid the noble palm trees and kind, soft flowers. Time hovers here like hummingbirds, like whirring watch-works, so fast as to seem motionless.

People stroll past us. And then a couple stop in their tracks—a man dressed casually like my father, a woman in a flowered blouse and turquoise skirt. Nothing special—here, everyone looks like my parents. But they have stopped, and the man is staring at us.

“Simon! Simon Taitz?”

My father looks at him. The stranger’s eyes slowly fill with light, as though he has seen an angel from heaven.

Two more men rush over, one with a beautiful Saint Bernard on a leash, the other clutching a small boy in each hand.

“What did you say? Is it him?”

“Can it be?”

“Taitz-the-Watchmaker?”
one says, as though that is the essence of who my father is.

Men, women, children. All venture forth to surround him, touching his arm, hugging his neck. He is perplexed—why are they all around him, especially? Do they all know one another? Simon Taitz at last begins to soften, to smile; he laughs, confused and expectant. Israel is a place where Jews like him, whom nobody wanted, can be loved.

More dogs come to him, pulling their owners and wagging their tails, joining in the fuss over the new celebrity. My father pats their heads, and a docile German shepherd licks his hand. He looks like a king, a good one, back from exile and receiving tribute. And then I hear the words that explain everything.

“This man saved us!” shouts one. “Zeh ha-ish shehitzil otanu!!”

“You hear that, Dovid? Yosef?” says the man with the two little boys. “This man saved
Abba
in the camps!”

“I was in your workshop in the war, Mr. Taitz!”

“In Dachau!” says another. “You saved us!”

“Because of you we are alive!”

An older man in a sky blue shirt that matches his eyes bends over to whisper a secret in my ear:

“Your father is a great, great man.”

“I always knew it,” I say.

That day, I learn that my father rescued many people in the war, in his watchmaker’s workshop at the Dachau concentration camp. Like a Jewish Oskar Schindler, he had gathered one man after another into the safety of his shelter, teaching them how to lean over a workbench, loupes in their eyes, tools in their hands, and act as though they were fixing watches. He himself did the technical work, and meanwhile, the other men within the growing workshop stayed indoors during the harsh winters. He regularly asked for more food for them, and they were fed. The Nazis, he had always told me, loved punctuality.

“In a way,” he always said, “they respected me and my work.”

Simon had marked the hours, minutes, and seconds of his own nightmare. He sensed that he would survive, that he had a mission to live and tell.

Now I know why my father felt so close to God. They were helping each other, here on earth. Perhaps being Jewish did put one in an uncomfortable position, but it was also a front-row seat to history, and here and there one could be a hero—a real one, a savior, the chosen of chosen.

And that is why on that long-ago day, there were hugs and tears of joy, redemption and hope, in the heart of Jerusalem, the broken but still beating heart of the world.

Always Ready

I
AM IN LOVE WITH ISRAEL and the idea of the Jewish hero (and heroine). Through word of mouth, my parents hear about a summer camp that follows the spirit of early Zionism. In that time, over a century ago, Israel had been a dream, and an Austrian Jew, Theodor Herzl, was mocked for saying, “If you want it, it is no legend.” It turned out that Herzl, who became the father of Zionism, was right. This camp, Betar, is dedicated to the spirit of its first pioneers, who wanted nothing more than a homeland of their own. The summer after our trip to Israel, my parents send me there for eight weeks.

I am eleven years old, and have never been away from my parents, but yeshiva has drilled the soul of the biblical prophets into mine. I know that my father is a hero in a broken world. The chants and songs of this intense place rouse and mesmerize me. Like a drumbeat, they stir my impressionable blood with thoughts of ultimate redemption.

“Do you want to go to Israel? Do you want to go on Aliyah, to rise up and be free in your own land?” we are asked, but only rhetorically.

“Yes! I’ve been there!” I pipe up. “I wanna go back!”

Most of the knock-kneed girls around me, kicking up dirt on the weedy grounds, could not care less about Jewish history or Israel. Tough girls from the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Long Island, they “make out” and “get felt up” by boys in the bushes; they pierce each other’s ears with sewing needles. I wonder if everyone has been sent to this camp by accident—ads in the papers were ubiquitous, and the fees, I later learn, ridiculously low. Here’s why: there are no normal camp activities. There is a small, scummy lake whose entry-level mud sucks like quicksand, horrible barrack-like bunks, and, for sports, tetherball and potato-sack races. For me, however, this place is no accident, but a perceived form of destiny. For those who are interested in more than simple summer fun, the camp provides a special path.

I soon decide that I want to be a Betari, an elite group within Camp Betar that adheres to a radical form of Jewish nationalism. To become part of this club, you have to learn Jewish military history and vow to “fight for freedom”—even to the point of death.

I want to be a Betari

I want to set my country free!

We stand together in the “uniform” of white shirt, navy shorts, and neckerchief. My hair, finally longer, is up in a high, tight ponytail; many of the older girls have long, thick braids that seem to mean serious business. My sneakers happen to be weird: my mother, who shops for me at her beloved John’s Bargain Store, where most shoes are sold from a large table, has found the world’s first pair of pointy sneakers. These points have never been in style, and perhaps will never be. But in this group, no one notices or cares.

We sing together, and when we say “my country” we mean Israel. Yes, it is technically “free”—between horrors for the moment—but we are obsessed by its history of fragility. This continuous looking-backward to the point of greatest trauma is familiar to me. Most of the other Betaris—like elite Scout members—are older than I am. Some have patrolled in neighborhoods where Jews are teased or ambushed. But I have been in military training of sorts for a long time myself.