“And those constant calls from the principal. What was his name? If it weren’t for the donation we gave to that big-shot rebbe, I’m sure you’d be in jail by now.”
“Ima, it had nothing to do with the rebbe.” I kicked myself for taking the bait. “Can’t I ever get a little credit for straightening myself out?”
“And Gali was just the opposite. Sweet as a bowl of tzimmes. And look what’s happened to him now.”
My father put his empty bowl aside and leaned back in his chair. “Your mother thinks he’s going to float off the edge of the planet. But he’s a bright boy; after a while he’ll get sick of all that wandering. How long can an intelligent person breathe in and breathe out without getting a little bored? Anyway, serving in the army is something to be proud of. You think ’48 was a party? We didn’t have proper ammunition, there was no training, they shoved a gun in your hand and told you to shoot. Half the time we didn’t know what we were shooting at. But after dragging ourselves out of the camps and forests of Europe, we were eager to do it. Who was going to defend this country if we didn’t?”
This launched Anat into another rant about the deficiencies of the modern Israeli army and the degradation of the Zionist dream. As she spoke, Tuvya’s tuneless humming rose several notches in volume, as did the sound of Habakuk’s imaginary sword fight in the living room. He was, as far as I could tell, the knight Moses tilting at the evil Pharaoh with a finely honed stalk of celery, holding his brightly colored, crocheted kipa to his chest like a shield, and stabbing the furniture cushions with deadly resolve. I concentrated on the greasy soup, tuning them all out as best I could.
At least Nava’s family was polite and civil, if a bit boring—normal people engaging in normal conversations. As I dug into course after course of the matzah-heavy food, I remembered Nava’s mother, the prior year, serving with great flourish some bizarre South American grain that she delightedly declared to be kosher for Passover. Nava had gushed about the dish, interrogating her mother in stultifying detail about cooking methods and nutritional values. I tried to imagine Nava and Yudit at their seder without me. Her parents had never been particularly fond of me—were they supporting her decision to finally throw the bum out or urging her to reconsider?
By the time we had all forced down the dry pastries, Habakuk had collapsed with exhaustion onto the living room couch, leaving no one to search for the hidden afikomen. Grumbling at his aching knees, my father pulled the crumbled matzah out from under the sofa, and we joylessly made our way through the rest of the Haggada, rotely singing every verse of the silly songs that were meant to keep the young children awake to the end. Only when every last song had been sung could the seder be declared complete.
But before I could get out the door and into the still-raging storm, my father pulled me aside for his yearly Passover admonition.
“Kobi, anything you do is your business. You’re a grown man; I would never intervene. You know that, right?”
“Is it about the hametz, Abba?”
“I know we didn’t raise you very religious. After the war I never had the stomach for all that ritual. But Kobi, even if you keep nothing else, you mustn’t eat hametz until the holiday is over.”
“I know how important that is to you,” I said, pulling on my coat.
But he continued, whispering earnestly, as if I had never heard the story before.
“You know what a saintly man my father was—he should rest in peace. He was kind to everyone, never judged people for ill. I’m not like him, you know that; I inherited my mother’s cynical eye and bitter tongue. But my father, he was a genuine tzaddik, a holy man. Even in Theresienstadt, the ruffians who shared his barracks wouldn’t let him empty the slop bin. He would gladly have done it! But they knew a tzaddik when they saw one. ‘Reb Yakov,’ they would say, ‘this is not work for you.’” As my father spoke, my eyes were fixed on the little green soldier hanging desperately from the ceiling fixture.
“Yes, Abba, you’ve told me.”
“By the time we got to Auschwitz, my father was so emaciated. They had shaved his beard and peyos, his face scrawny and drawn. But when the air turned balmy, he started to count out the days from the new moon, trading scraps of bread for little bits of potato. And when he decided it was the full moon of Passover, for eight days no bread passed his lips. All he’d eat were the rotting potato scraps that he’d saved up. He risked his life rather than eat hametz on Passover!” He looked at me to see if his words were sinking in.
“Yes, Abba, I know.”
“Me, I ate whatever little bit they gave me. And he insisted I eat the bread! He said that a child, under such terrible circumstances, was not obligated. It never made any sense to me—I was a teenager, and much stronger than he. I ate the bread, but I swore a solemn oath that if I survived, I would never, so long as I lived, eat hametz on Passover again.”
“I know, Abba. You tell me this every year.”
“He never made it back from that hell. It would be a disgrace to his blessed memory not to keep this one mitzvah.”
“I understand, Abba. Don’t worry,” I said, thinking about the stash of pita I had stored in the freezer to get me through the week. I had always hated the taste of matzah.
“I trust you, Kobi. You’re named after him. You even look like him—more every day. You would never desecrate his memory in that way!”
It was close to midnight before I was finally liberated for my solitary, storm-driven ride home.
5
My father called early the next morning to make sure I knew about the bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya. I had, of course, already heard about it on the car radio during my drive home. While our family had been joylessly chanting our way through the ancient story of slavery and oppression, someone with present-day grievances had stepped out of the rain and into a crowded hotel dining hall, just as people were finding their seats for the evening’s seder, and exploded a bomb hidden in an attaché case. Twenty were confirmed dead and scores more wounded. Among the many elderly dead, my father told me, was an old friend of my mother’s, Libke. He whispered the name reverentially, though I’d never heard it before. My mother was taking it badly, he said, and wouldn’t want to talk. Abruptly, he hung up the phone.
The following three days of the holiday dragged miserably. On Friday afternoon, a mere two hours after I had done my first real grocery shop in the new neighborhood, a bomb went off in the supermarket I had just left. Two killed, a couple dozen wounded—a minor event, by recent standards, but distinct because the bomber was an eighteen-year-old woman. I gave in to the nagging pull of curiosity and went to have a look at the glass and debris scattered throughout the cordoned-off street. The country was in a state of extreme hysteria as the bloodiest month yet of the intifada was drawing to a close, the faces of the hundred-plus dead from March attacks splashed across every newspaper. Massive incursions into the West Bank had been launched to try and rout out the terrorist cells. Thankfully, I hadn’t been called up this time for reserve duty. It would all come to naught, I was sure—there was no defeating a resistance this brutal. But that wouldn’t prevent the self-righteous hypocrites in Europe from staging massive protests against the country’s fruitless efforts to stanch the bleeding.
The holiday had me feeling adrift; I had no idea how I was supposed to spend my days. Bored as I was by my job, at least it gave me somewhere to go each day, people to talk to, distraction from my now-vacuous existence. I was determined, in defiance of Jezebel, not to do a stitch of “productive” work and instead spent the days walking aimlessly through the unfamiliar streets of Kiryat Yovel, the evenings trapped in my run-down flat, listening to the drone of the unrelentingly somber news reports on the television. My isolation was stark and I marveled at the extent to which my life had been orchestrated by Nava. I resuscitated the memories of holidays past: walking through the zoo with Yudit on a hot afternoon as she chattered alongside me; horseback riding on a family trip to the windy grasslands of the Golan; Nava’s elegantly thrown-together