Read Online Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Memoir) (2010) by Rhoda Janzen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rhoda Janzen
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privilege money and knowledge will think they have all the answers, and if they think they have all the answers, they won't be interested in seeking God. I can't speak for rich people, but in my experience higher education does not produce people who think they have all the answers, unless you count my brother Aaron. Higher education does just the opposite; it teaches us that we don't have all the answers. Socrates summed it up very well: "I know only that I know nothing at all." So unfortunately the Mennonites have it back-assward on this one. Which is something they'd no doubt have figured out if they'd gone to college like normal folks.
A hundred years ago, while still in Ukraine, the Mennonites proudly pointed to their communal literacy, contrasting their disciplined public school system with the illiterate squalor in which their Russian neighbors lived. But the Mennonites made sure not to be too literate. They had firm ideas about when to pull out: Boys typically completed high school; girls stopped at grade three. It was enough to be able to figure numbers and read the Bible. Any more education and you might start asking questions that could weaken your faith and take you away from God.
My grandparents' generation of Mennonites was united in its hostility to higher education. Once when I was traveling in Ukraine with a group of older Mennonites, I made friends with a fellow traveler, a stoop-shouldered slip of a widow who had escaped Stalinist Russia by "attaching herself" to a German officer during the occupation. Even at age eighty-four, with decades of prosperity and a happy marriage behind her, Marta refused to discuss the sexual relationship that had saved her life. When I asked her about her German benefactor, all she said was that the attachment had resulted in emigration papers for herself and her four sisters.
Marta was a tiny thing-the top of her silvery head came up to my waist-but she was filled with the spirit to see her old stomping ground, and I found it delightful to adjust my steps to her slower pace. For most of the trip we talked about Marta: her past, her losses, her understanding of the political events in the years after the Russian Revolution. As a girl she had actually seen the infamous anarchist Nestor Makhno. I felt blessed that I had found a traveling companion who remembered the events of the Maknovshchina firsthand. Easy friendships often spring up among travelers, and soon Marta was confiding more than the facts of her story to me. Our intimacy was helped along by difficult physical circumstances, since she had to rely on me for assistance over uneven steps and open trenches and such. She was light as a leaf, and I often picked her up and lifted her over rough patches. Rural Ukraine, with its rank privies, is challenging even for sturdy travelers, let alone for frail octogenarians who lack the lower-body strength to pee standing up. No wonder we became close so quickly.
Toward the end of our time together, Marta and I were on deck aboard the Glushkov , sailing toward Yalta and the Sea of Azov. Leaving behind Sevastopol and the Mennonite settlements of her youth, we stood watching the sun set on the Black Sea. It must have suddenly occurred to Marta that she knew very little about the woman who had been at her elbow for the last three weeks. Until that moment Marta hadn't asked me much about my own situation; she knew only that I was Mennonite and that I was Si Janzen's daughter. That had been good enough for her. "My dear," she said, her small hands holding the ship rail, "how is it that a young woman like you comes to be traveling with us old folks to the old places?"
"I wanted to know more about my history," I said.
"How do you fill your days when you aren't traveling?" she asked. "What is it you do, if you don't have a family of your own?"
Ah, sweet woman, I didn't want to disappoint her! If she found out I was a scholar, would she shake her head in sorrow and say Ji jileada, ji
A hundred years ago, while still in Ukraine, the Mennonites proudly pointed to their communal literacy, contrasting their disciplined public school system with the illiterate squalor in which their Russian neighbors lived. But the Mennonites made sure not to be too literate. They had firm ideas about when to pull out: Boys typically completed high school; girls stopped at grade three. It was enough to be able to figure numbers and read the Bible. Any more education and you might start asking questions that could weaken your faith and take you away from God.
My grandparents' generation of Mennonites was united in its hostility to higher education. Once when I was traveling in Ukraine with a group of older Mennonites, I made friends with a fellow traveler, a stoop-shouldered slip of a widow who had escaped Stalinist Russia by "attaching herself" to a German officer during the occupation. Even at age eighty-four, with decades of prosperity and a happy marriage behind her, Marta refused to discuss the sexual relationship that had saved her life. When I asked her about her German benefactor, all she said was that the attachment had resulted in emigration papers for herself and her four sisters.
Marta was a tiny thing-the top of her silvery head came up to my waist-but she was filled with the spirit to see her old stomping ground, and I found it delightful to adjust my steps to her slower pace. For most of the trip we talked about Marta: her past, her losses, her understanding of the political events in the years after the Russian Revolution. As a girl she had actually seen the infamous anarchist Nestor Makhno. I felt blessed that I had found a traveling companion who remembered the events of the Maknovshchina firsthand. Easy friendships often spring up among travelers, and soon Marta was confiding more than the facts of her story to me. Our intimacy was helped along by difficult physical circumstances, since she had to rely on me for assistance over uneven steps and open trenches and such. She was light as a leaf, and I often picked her up and lifted her over rough patches. Rural Ukraine, with its rank privies, is challenging even for sturdy travelers, let alone for frail octogenarians who lack the lower-body strength to pee standing up. No wonder we became close so quickly.
Toward the end of our time together, Marta and I were on deck aboard the Glushkov , sailing toward Yalta and the Sea of Azov. Leaving behind Sevastopol and the Mennonite settlements of her youth, we stood watching the sun set on the Black Sea. It must have suddenly occurred to Marta that she knew very little about the woman who had been at her elbow for the last three weeks. Until that moment Marta hadn't asked me much about my own situation; she knew only that I was Mennonite and that I was Si Janzen's daughter. That had been good enough for her. "My dear," she said, her small hands holding the ship rail, "how is it that a young woman like you comes to be traveling with us old folks to the old places?"
"I wanted to know more about my history," I said.
"How do you fill your days when you aren't traveling?" she asked. "What is it you do, if you don't have a family of your own?"
Ah, sweet woman, I didn't want to disappoint her! If she found out I was a scholar, would she shake her head in sorrow and say Ji jileada, ji
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