Read Online No Time for Tears by Cynthia Freeman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Cynthia Freeman
Ads: Link
holding the rope for the goat to follow.
Avrum clutched his holy books to his chest.
Soon the small assembly was lost from sight, as Yankel the milkman wiped the tears from his eyes and blew his nose on the rag he had taken from his pocket. He stood in the middle of the road long after they disappeared, wishing their journey could have been his own.
When they reached the port in Odessa they were far from being alone. Theirs was hardly an isolated departure … from the small towns and hamlets of the Ukraine and the Russian-controlled parts of Poland hundreds of young men and women were packing their meager belongings, and with tears of good-bye to their parents, leaving for, they hoped, something better. Some merely ran away from home when fathers accused their sons of heresy. Zionism was a forbidden doctrine among many of the rabbis and the most devout. Their departure was met with family denunciation … God will send the Messiah was the watchword that rang through the religious of the shtetl , wait, wait But the youth of that day was the same as that of any other … it could no longer hold to the misguided rabbis and the devotions of their fathers. A new time was at hand, and the young were moving with the times. If the Messiah had not redeemed them in two thousand years, then they would redeem themselves. Through Zionism.
On rusting, battered, listing freighters they left Odessa. Some would embark at Trieste, or Constantinople, or Port Said, where they would change to slow cargo vessels to the promised land. The Rabinsky-Landau clan’s ancient freighter was bound for Jaffa.
Chavala and the children found space belowdecks, where they prepared their bedding on the floor while Dovid went to make arrangements for the goat. Avrum went up on deck, took out his tallis and wrapped himself in it, then swayed back and forth with the ancient rhythm and intoned:
Hear me, Jacob.
Israel, whom I have called:
I am the one.
The beginning and the end.
My own hand founded the earth
and spread out the skies.
Thus saith the Eternal One.
Who created the heavens and
stretched them out.
Who made the earth and all
that grows in it, who gives
breath to its people and spirit
to those who walk on it.
The food supplies were rationed by Chavala. The baby had colic … the goat’s milk had soured. Dvora had dysentery. Raizel seemed to manage the discomforts without complaint, and Sheine became acquainted with a chevraman from Galicia whom Dovid distrusted almost as much as the Russian moujiks. So far as he was concerned, the Galicianers were selfish gonifs.
Knowing how difficult things were for Chavala, Dovid was reluctant to mention the change in Sheine, so he assumed a fatherly role on his own … “Sheine, I want you to stay away from this chevraman. I don’t like the liberty I saw him take with you on deck last night, putting his arm around you—”
“You’re not my father. I don’t have to listen to you.” There was anger in her eyes, when of course it was love she wanted to show. She had allowed the Galicianer to hold her for Dovid to see, to let him know how desirable she could be to a man. Chavala wasn’t the only one. If she’d had. the jewels he’d given his wife and the black silk dress with the white lace collar, well, she too could look like a queen—
“Sheine, you’ve changed so I hardly recognize you,” he said, shaking his head.
“Oh? You noticed I changed? Did you, Dovid … well, good. I’m a woman, I’m thirteen and—”
“I know you’re a woman, Sheine. But at the risk of sounding like a boring pedant, I’d like to point out that being a woman doesn’t make a person a lady—”
“You have one lady in the family already. I want to be a woman.”
Spoken like a true thirteen-year-old, he thought.
She turned and ran until she reached the place that led her to their dark hold below, where she lay down and cried herself into exhaustion.
When they came into the Mediterranean people
Avrum clutched his holy books to his chest.
Soon the small assembly was lost from sight, as Yankel the milkman wiped the tears from his eyes and blew his nose on the rag he had taken from his pocket. He stood in the middle of the road long after they disappeared, wishing their journey could have been his own.
When they reached the port in Odessa they were far from being alone. Theirs was hardly an isolated departure … from the small towns and hamlets of the Ukraine and the Russian-controlled parts of Poland hundreds of young men and women were packing their meager belongings, and with tears of good-bye to their parents, leaving for, they hoped, something better. Some merely ran away from home when fathers accused their sons of heresy. Zionism was a forbidden doctrine among many of the rabbis and the most devout. Their departure was met with family denunciation … God will send the Messiah was the watchword that rang through the religious of the shtetl , wait, wait But the youth of that day was the same as that of any other … it could no longer hold to the misguided rabbis and the devotions of their fathers. A new time was at hand, and the young were moving with the times. If the Messiah had not redeemed them in two thousand years, then they would redeem themselves. Through Zionism.
On rusting, battered, listing freighters they left Odessa. Some would embark at Trieste, or Constantinople, or Port Said, where they would change to slow cargo vessels to the promised land. The Rabinsky-Landau clan’s ancient freighter was bound for Jaffa.
Chavala and the children found space belowdecks, where they prepared their bedding on the floor while Dovid went to make arrangements for the goat. Avrum went up on deck, took out his tallis and wrapped himself in it, then swayed back and forth with the ancient rhythm and intoned:
Hear me, Jacob.
Israel, whom I have called:
I am the one.
The beginning and the end.
My own hand founded the earth
and spread out the skies.
Thus saith the Eternal One.
Who created the heavens and
stretched them out.
Who made the earth and all
that grows in it, who gives
breath to its people and spirit
to those who walk on it.
The food supplies were rationed by Chavala. The baby had colic … the goat’s milk had soured. Dvora had dysentery. Raizel seemed to manage the discomforts without complaint, and Sheine became acquainted with a chevraman from Galicia whom Dovid distrusted almost as much as the Russian moujiks. So far as he was concerned, the Galicianers were selfish gonifs.
Knowing how difficult things were for Chavala, Dovid was reluctant to mention the change in Sheine, so he assumed a fatherly role on his own … “Sheine, I want you to stay away from this chevraman. I don’t like the liberty I saw him take with you on deck last night, putting his arm around you—”
“You’re not my father. I don’t have to listen to you.” There was anger in her eyes, when of course it was love she wanted to show. She had allowed the Galicianer to hold her for Dovid to see, to let him know how desirable she could be to a man. Chavala wasn’t the only one. If she’d had. the jewels he’d given his wife and the black silk dress with the white lace collar, well, she too could look like a queen—
“Sheine, you’ve changed so I hardly recognize you,” he said, shaking his head.
“Oh? You noticed I changed? Did you, Dovid … well, good. I’m a woman, I’m thirteen and—”
“I know you’re a woman, Sheine. But at the risk of sounding like a boring pedant, I’d like to point out that being a woman doesn’t make a person a lady—”
“You have one lady in the family already. I want to be a woman.”
Spoken like a true thirteen-year-old, he thought.
She turned and ran until she reached the place that led her to their dark hold below, where she lay down and cried herself into exhaustion.
When they came into the Mediterranean people
Similar Books
