Lost in Translation

TABBY REFAEL

Forty years after the Islamic Revolution mercilessly pulled at Iranian Jewry like a powerful vacuum cleaner over a precious Persian rug — forcing us to rebuild our lives as immigrants or protected refugees — many in the Jewish community know what Iranian Jews have gained in the United States and what we have given back to this country.

From a local angle, one look at downtown Los Angeles, Westwood or Beverly Hills — at synagogues pulsing with chatty people, thriving businesses and startups — points to a community that truly has moved beyond survival to thrive, build, create and renew.

Yet, after 40 years of living in the U.S., Iranian Jews still haven’t acknowledged everything we have lost as we’ve sought to rebuild ourselves in this country.

I’m not referring to the lives, homes, possessions and memories we lost in Iran. Those hold their own spaces in the unfillable voids of our hearts and quiet yearnings of our dreams. The loss is hidden within a piece of ourselves — in a certain, simple humanity within us that often is muted amid the wonderful noise of an all-American life.

We all know what we gained by escaping Iran. Perhaps now it is time to ponder what few have dared ask before: How are we worse for it? Is what we have lost irretrievable, as we relentlessly push forward with our American dreams?

I was raised in a home in post-revolutionary Iran filled with women, including my mother, both of my grandmothers and a multitude of aunts. Women were everywhere; from our living room, where they sat cross-legged on the Persian carpet and rolled up dozens and dozens of stuffed grape leaves together, to the backyard, where they hung freshly laundered shirts on the line to dry and warned children not to steal the clothespins and clasp them over their noses. They worked in the garden, pruning the fragrant red roses and throwing big handfuls of seed and grain into our dove aviary. In the kitchen, they huddled around giant pots of boiling meat broth and argued over who had the definitive Persian stew recipe, and tasted each dish that had been prepared, in a magnificent display of culinary competition and slightly devastating constructive criticism.

“Flora,” my favorite aunt, was apt to say to my mother, “Tabby’s too thin. She looks like a stalk of parsley. Feed her one raw egg mixed with chocolate powder every day.”Forty years after the Islamic Revolution mercilessly pulled at Iranian Jewry like a powerful vacuum cleaner over a precious Persian rug — forcing us to rebuild our lives as immigrants or protected refugees — many in the Jewish community know what Iranian Jews have gained in the United States and what we have given back to this country.

From a local angle, one look at downtown Los Angeles, Westwood or Beverly Hills — at synagogues pulsing with chatty people, thriving businesses and startups — points to a community that truly has moved beyond survival to thrive, build, create and renew.

Yet, after 40 years of living in the U.S., Iranian Jews still haven’t acknowledged everything we have lost as we’ve sought to rebuild ourselves in this country.

I’m not referring to the lives, homes, possessions and memories we lost in Iran. Those hold their own spaces in the unfillable voids of our hearts and quiet yearnings of our dreams. The loss is hidden within a piece of ourselves — in a certain, simple humanity within us that often is muted amid the wonderful noise of an all-American life.

We all know what we gained by escaping Iran. Perhaps now it is time to ponder what few have dared ask before: How are we worse for it? Is what we have lost irretrievable, as we relentlessly push forward with our American dreams?

I was raised in a home in post-revolutionary Iran filled with women, including my mother, both of my grandmothers and a multitude of aunts. Women were everywhere; from our living room, where they sat cross-legged on the Persian carpet and rolled up dozens and dozens of stuffed grape leaves together, to the backyard, where they hung freshly laundered shirts on the line to dry and warned children not to steal the clothespins and clasp them over their noses. They worked in the garden, pruning the fragrant red roses and throwing big handfuls of seed and grain into our dove aviary. In the kitchen, they huddled around giant pots of boiling meat broth and argued over who had the definitive Persian stew recipe, and tasted each dish that had been prepared, in a magnificent display of culinary competition and slightly devastating constructive criticism.

“Flora,” my favorite aunt, was apt to say to my mother, “Tabby’s too thin. She looks like a stalk of parsley. Feed her one raw egg mixed with chocolate powder every day.”

I love America, and I love being an American, but if I have any more personal space, I’m going to suffocate.

“Chicken fat is the best thing for scrawny children,” another aunt would chime in. “Everyone knows that. Flora, substitute chicken fat for oil and you’ll see a real difference.”

Finally, in a cold, firm voice meant to convey that as the matriarch who had seen everything, she was the ultimate authority on thin kids, my maternal grandmother would say, “That child needs [barbari] bread in the morning, full-fat yogurt in the afternoon and plenty of meat in the evening.”

I remember sitting on my mother’s lap, listening to many conversations like this and delighting in knowing that women not only are incredible and indispensable, but they truly know everything. I loved those women, and from the safety of our home, I was mesmerized by the sight of their luscious hair, which they (and I) were forced to cover in public after the revolution.

When I think back to my childhood in Iran, I remember much more than the nightmare of having lived as a young, female Jew with Ayatollah Khomeini in power and President Saddam Hussein’s Iraq waging war upon us from across the border.

I recall all those glorious women: the ones with fat calves and thin wallets; the ones who shared every secret, except for that one recipe that remained forever theirs; the ones who gathered together, raised children together, shared their loneliness about their marriages together; the ones who laughed, sobbed and complained together, yet weren’t fated to stay together because nothing rips at the heart of a family more than wars and revolutions.

Some of those women even came to this country, and I often wonder if they’ve ever experienced a day of real peace and comfort since — the kind that lets a weary soul rest, not the kind derived from luxurious couches, smooth cars or a Costco every 15 miles.

In America, we always confuse comfort with contentment.

Thirty years after those childhood moments I spent in the company of those women who loved me and defended me, held me accountable and asked more of me, I am raising my own children in America — in the company of seemingly no one. 

Today, I work part time from home and am blessed to be able to care for our toddler and infant. Yet I spend nearly all those moments — whether at home or at the supermarket — in solitude. I have all the freedom in the world to raise my children the way I see fit (my husband is at work every day) yet I grieve that my children will never know the glorious experience of having been raised by a group of vibrant women, as I was — even if that came with its challenges because the unsolicited advice my mother received from everyone else never seemed to end.

With some exceptions, American women are free to mother as they choose. However, Americans often forget why we’re free to raise our children as we wish: It’s because we’re almost always alone.

From teenagers who escape reality by shutting out parents and turning on phones; young men and women who struggle with drug addiction or mental health issues on their own because they’re afraid to tell family members; married couples who can’t reveal their infertility struggles without being deemed somehow defective; to any adult who still lives at home with his or her family, we’re all still alone, because there’s something about living in the U.S. that lends itself quite well to living — and struggling — on your own.

For a new generation of Iranian American Jewish mothers, the village that once raised children in Iran now is compressed into a local “mommies” group on Facebook. Even that can elicit guilt and shaming from total strangers who wonder in the form of a comment why you would ever let your child “have a rash like that for more than an hour.”

The entrance to the Tehran Grand Bazaar / Photo from depositphotos.com

In such instances, I truly miss having been raised by my grandmothers and aunts in Iran, who would have come up to my mother and said, “You know we love you, but for God’s sake, put some fenugreek and cold cream on your child’s bottom before she turns as red as the beets.” I long to hear such feedback from a know-it-all aunt who could visit me several times a week, rather than from “Debbie” in a Facebook mothers’ group.

The fact that many young women who stay home with their children usually are alone during the day also means they now have extraordinarily greater loads on their plates than ever before. “Tabby,” my mother observed last month as she watched me standing slightly crookedly in front of our kitchen counter, “you stand on your feet too much. When I was your age, I didn’t know what [body] pain was.”

She was right. For nearly a decade, she raised her two daughters with the help of my maternal grandmother, who cooked many of our meals; my paternal grandmother, who lovingly played with us for hours on end; and our many aunts, who slipped us a big bowls of pasta behind our mother’s back when she told us not to ruin our appetites with anything other than meat.

These days, my mother would like to help me but she knows mostly recipes for Persian food, which, however sumptuous, our toddler rejects because he’s discovered chicken nuggets. She struggles to read to him from our multitude of English-language books, and although she cannot pronounce Seussian words such as “wocket” and “nizzards,” she appreciates the books’ magical whimsy.

I understand all of those wonderful women who helped raise me in Iran were able to do so because they could afford to stay home, or because traditional Iranian society did not expect them to work. In the United States, a working woman is the norm. It would be unrealistic to demand I or anyone else be surrounded at home by a support network of people who have nothing better to do than to give us advice on how to persuade our children to eat right.

This is America; we all work and we all hustle. If we need creative ways to feed our children, that’s what Pinterest is for. But for some reason, arguing over chicken fat versus raw eggs and chocolate with my phone instead of a human being always falls flat.

Having a job may be stimulating and rewarding, but it doesn’t mean we still won’t feel alone. Individualism — that wonderful benchmark of the American spirit — can be just a stone’s throw away from solitude and isolation.

I am blessed to have several aunts within proximity to our home in Los Angeles, but I see them only a few times a year because of two of the greatest blessings-turned-curses in this wonderful country: Everyone here is perpetually, maddeningly busy, whether she is 5 or 65, and the indisputable reality of living in a country where everyone respects boundaries and no one wants to “intrude upon your time.”

I am raising my own children in America — in the company of seemingly no one.

The American emphasis on the individual and individual space not only is a foreign value in Iran, but all over the Middle East, including Israel, where a small family dinner at home often turns into a block party with neighbors, and friends arrive at one’s apartment uninvited but certain they’ll never be turned away because “it’s not the right time.”

Personal space is overrated, especially in this city, where one could spend an entire day driving and not talk to another soul. I love America, and I love being an American, but if I have any more personal space, I’m going to suffocate.

The first lesson I learned about the U.S. came in the form of a Chicken McNugget. Immediately after landing at Los Angeles International Airport, our family experienced its first, true moment of American life: We found a McDonald’s, but because we’re Iranian, we became frustrated and overwhelmed at the sheer number of ways someone could make a sandwich. The same paradox of choice soon showed us that in America, there was more than one way to be Jewish, and that included deciding not to be Jewish.

We had never heard of distinctions such as Reform, Conservative, Orthodox or anything else when we were in Iran. If you were Jewish, you either were known to be more practicing or less practicing. That was pretty much it. No one quibbled over who was a “good Jew” because it was hard enough to ensure you were being a “good Iranian,” especially after the revolution, when the first Jewish casualty of the brutal, new theocracy was a generous philanthropist named Habib Elghanian, who was murdered for “being friends with the enemies of God,” a reference to the various charitable causes he supported in Israel.

In Iran, Jews lived as a minority without the option of disassociating from their Jewish identity and joining the majority, unless they wanted to convert to Islam. Even if they were less-observant Jews, as far as many in the greater Shiite population was concerned, they still were Jews — and Jews only.

America simply doesn’t work like that. Here, we’re still a minority, but the only people who never let us forget that at our core, we’re Jewish — whether we’re Reconstructionists, Chabadniks or completely unaffiliated — are anti-Semites. Otherwise, it can become easy even for us to forget we’re Jewish.

Despite an alarming uptick in anti-Semitic incidents during the past few years, I believe the majority of non-Jewish Americans wouldn’t conduct business with a colleague or admit someone to an institution of higher education before thinking to themselves, “I wonder if he is a Jew?”

That wasn’t the case in Iran. For reasons ranging from last names that sounded Jewish to good old-fashioned gossip, everyone knew who was Jewish and who wasn’t. This meant Jews had no choice but to stay within their community simply because Iranian society was less apt to let them break out of it.

Until the turn of the 20th century, this separation was a physical one, as most Jews in Iran were forced to live in Jewish quarters, commonly referred to as the “mahaleh,” because they were believed to be so “najes,” or ritually impure, that they could contaminate the general Muslim population. Jews were banned from leaving their homes during the rain or snow lest their impurities get washed onto a Muslim.

Eventually, the walls of those ghettos wore away, and in the two decades leading up to the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Jews of Iran assimilated more into the greater population in that many embraced secular lifestyles and counted Muslim Iranians as close friends and co-workers. Yet the unspoken boundaries between Jews and the greater population still were alive and palpable.

In Iran, Muslims define Jews; in the United States, Jews define themselves, and often this means they negate themselves because they reject any semblance of Jewish identity. It would only be a matter of time before some Iranian American Jews began to do the same.

Individualism — that wonderful benchmark of the American spirit — can be just a stone’s throw away from solitude and isolation.

“Daniel” believes he is “religiously homeless” but describes his situation with the kind of apathy most people normally reserve for choosing laundry detergent. He won’t set foot inside an Orthodox, Persian synagogue because it reminds him of everything he came to hate about it as a child. According to Daniel, this includes rabbis who try to “scare” congregants into observing halachah, or Jewish law, rather than inspiring them, and Hebrew prayers he cannot understand because he never had any formal Jewish education.

Yet, he cannot attend services at a Reform congregation because everything — from the melodies to the nerve-wracking silence of people praying rather than chatting — are too foreign to him. He’s also anxious that at any moment, a rabbi, informed by gossip, will pull him aside and try to convince him to end his two-year relationship with a young woman of Mexican descent who is not Jewish. He’s stopped attending inspirational talks on Jewish issues aimed at students and young professionals because none of these lectures has come close to the kind of passion and joy his girlfriend exudes when she talks to him about the amazing kindness of Christianity.

Would Daniel have faced such isolation and struggle had he been in Iran? Of course not. He would be living under an oppressive regime and scraping together enough money to buy his family some meat (the rate of inflation in the country currently is 51%) while cursing himself for not having tried to leave Iran sooner. He would have been miserable, but according to his mother, at least he would have made it to a few Shabbat services every now and then.

In America, we each received a second life, but the real question is: What are we doing with that life?

There’s a lot to be said for community, in all its forms: the elderly baker who made fresh loaves of barbari bread so elegantly that the dough almost seemed like an extension of his hands, and who always slipped you a little extra piece and gave you a blessing that your mother should have more healthy children; the kosher butcher who knew exactly what kind of meat you needed the day before Shabbat; the neighbor who heard your bitter screams and invited you to her home for a cup of a tea and a plea for you to be more compassionate to your emotionally detached husband. They were all there — in a land of blessing and curse — where you seldom locked your front door and always lived as a Jew, because society rarely allowed you the chance to identify as anyone else.

There’s a reason why most people — including Persians — prefer peacocks over pigeons. While pigeons annoy, peacocks display, and they display brilliantly. They often hide their true beauty until just the right moment, then whip it out in a fantastic show of lavish opulence. They remind me of a young Persian man who dresses humbly, then drives off in his shiny new Maserati, or every family who takes out a second mortgage on its modest home to fund a $700,000 wedding.

Were we like this back in Iran? A few of us were, but I believe we all had the potential to flaunt what we had — that is, once we were able to get our hands on something. That’s where America came in.

Twenty-five years before Facebook, Iranian American Jews were living in a way that elicited awe, respect and, yes, envy, which is exactly what many wanted. Then social media came along and made what used to be a glamorous wedding attended by 400 into an enviable wedding “trailer” film, shot overhead with a drone and viewable by 2,000 people who didn’t attend the wedding.

In the 1970s, my father asked if he could marry my mother. Technically, he didn’t even ask her; he stood before her and her family, in witness of his own family, praised my mother’s virtues and asked my grandfather for the privilege to marry her. In a way, it sounds backward and unromantic, and qualifies as the very definition of the collective as opposed to the individual.

Today in the United States, or at least in Beverly Hills, a wedding proposal is a very private moment, shared only by the loving couple — and a few photographers, videographers and perhaps a florist. After the happy news is announced via social media, there’s a flurry of congratulatory messages — hundreds of them — all delivered virtually.

In one instant, that private moment becomes publicly visible and with it, self-questioning begins. Parents see those images on Facebook and might wonder why their daughters still are single; wives click on a photo and are envious of the engagement ring in that picture; older folks feel happy for the bride and groom but might wonder why they were fated to endure such a miserable marriage. We all compare.

In Iran, Muslims define Jews; in the United States, Jews define themselves, and often this means they negate themselves because they reject any semblance of Jewish identity.

In Iran, especially after the revolution, miserable societal conditions overshadowed personal misery, whether in the form of an unhappy marriage or unfulfilled career goals. We had bigger fish to fry than feeling inadequate over the size of engagement rings.

In this country, we not only have the freedom and means to fry the fish, but we sit alone and chew on every single piece, often with a side of bitterness and ingratitude.

Ironically, we now have the opportunity to know more about others’ lives than ever before, but most of what we know — such as someone’s latest glamorous vacation — matters little, and we hardly see one another.

In America, we each received a second life, but the real question is: What are we doing with that life?

Are we working harder, driven by an obsession to give more tzedakah this year than we did last year, or by an obsession to have better devices this year than we did last year?

Are we desperate to be married so we can love and be loved and also ensure Jewish continuity and transmit 3,000-year-old values, or so we can have perfect photo ops and congratulatory messages from 800 of our closest friends?

Are we taking full advantage of America’s religious freedoms by choosing to actively live as Jews, or not holding ourselves accountable for whatever assimilation we believe inevitably will knock on our doors?

America is amazing in that it redeems and saves us but also allows us the opportunity to wholly lose ourselves. But do I ever wish I still lived in Iran? Never.

I have bigger fish to fry.

Tabby Refael – is a Los Angeles-based writer, speaker and co-founder of 30 Years After, which promotes civic action, leadership and participation in Jewish life among Iranian American Jews.

My heart lives in Israel

Fred Maroun

Fred Maroun

I was born in Lebanon in 1961, and I grew up in the streets of Beirut. Before the civil war that started in 1975, we played in the streets unsupervised, unaware of the fratricide hatred that was brewing. During the war, I saw Arabs kill Arabs, Muslims kill Muslims, and Christians kill Christians. When the war ended in 1990, a quarter million people had been killed.

We took a country that was thriving and beautiful, and we turned it into ruins. My Lebanon has not yet recovered, 27 years after that war ended.

Next door to Lebanon, I saw a country fending for its life, repelling Arab attack after Arab attack. When they weren’t fighting their attackers, they were building a nation. In only a few decades, they had made the desert bloom, and they were a light unto the nations.

We Arabs chose to fight each other, and we chose to fight the Jews. We chose to make them our enemies rather than our friends, and we chose to destroy rather than to build.

I now live in Canada, a great, beautiful, and successful country, but it will never be truly mine. When I watch events unfolding in the Middle East, my body remains here, but my heart keeps travelling back, and it invariably takes me to Israel.

When Israelis live with daily rocket attacks, my heart is in Israel.

When Israelis are stabbed for the crime of being Jews, my heart is in Israel.

When Israel must fight yet one more war that it never wanted to fight, my heart is in Israel.

When one more terror attack kills Israelis who were going to school, or going to work, or going to pray, my heart is in Israel.

When the world condemns Israel for defending itself but ignores that Arabs have rejected peace again and again and again, my heart is in Israel.

When my Lebanon and other criminal Arab regimes gang up to attempt to erase Jewish history in the eternal Jewish city of Jerusalem, my heart is in Israel.

My heart lives in Israel, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, in an office building in Haifa, or on a bus in the busy streets of Tel Aviv.

As long as Israel must fight for the right to exist, my heart will live in Israel. As long as Israel grows, invents, and thrives despite the bombs and the hatred, my heart will live in Israel. As long as my Lebanon is part of the problem and not part of the solution, my heart will live in Israel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fred Maroun is a Canadian of Arab origin who lived in Lebanon until 1984, including during 10 years of civil war. Fred supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and he supports a liberal and democratic Middle East where all religions and nationalities, including Palestinians, can co-exist in peace with each other and with Israel, and where human rights are respected. Fred is an atheist, a social liberal, and an advocate of equal rights for LGBT people everywhere. Fred Maroun writes for Gatestone Institute.

Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934

Aleksandra Król

Po moim zgonie użalcie się tak:
Był człowiek – patrzcie: oto już go nie ma;
Przed swoim czasem odszedł człowiek ten,
Pieśń jego życia urwała się w środku;Ach, jaki żal!
Pieśń jeszcze miał jedną,
I pieśń ta przepadła na zawsze,Na zawsze.

[Po moim zgonie, przeł. Natan Gross]

85 lat temu zmarł Chaim Nachman Bialik – poeta tworzący w jidysz, ale przede wszystkim po hebrajsku. Dla wielu współczesnych był wieszczem, czy nawet prorokiem. W nekrologu na pierwszej stronie wydawanego w Krakowie „Nowego Dziennika” napisano: „był Nauczycielem, Mistrzem i Przewodnikiem” [Nowy Dziennik” z dn. 07.07.1934, nr 186]. Przede wszystkim Bialik był poetą, który „ożywił” skostniałą poezję hebrajską, wzbogacił język o potoczne, a także o stworzone przez siebie zwroty. Znany jest ze swoich wierszy i poematów o narodowym charakterze, nawołujących Żydów do walki o swoje prawa i wychwalających siłę żydowskiego ducha i tradycję. Tworzył też bardzo osobiste wiersze miłosne i poświęcone naturze. Nie należy zapominać o jego twórczości dziecięcej. Również obecnie dzieci w przedszkolach w Izraelu uczą się wierszy jego autorstwa, śpiewają piosenki z jego słowami. Izraelskie dzieci wychowują się na wierszach Bialika, jak polskie na utworach Juliana Tuwima czy Jana Brzechwy.

Chaim Nachman Bialik urodził się 9 stycznia 1873 r. we wsi Rady pod Żytomierzem (ob. Ukraina). Rodzina była uboga. Jego ojciec Icik Josef handlował drzewem, a później próbował prowadzić karczmę na przedmieściach Żytomierza. Jego interesy nie powiodły się, a wkrótce zmarł. Pozostała po nim wdowa Dina Priwe Bialik nie dawała rady utrzymać siebie i dzieci. Chaim Nachman został więc oddany na wychowanie do dziadka Jankiela Moszego Bialika w Żytomierzu. Tam odebrał tradycyjną edukację religijną (cheder), uzupełnioną także o świeckie przedmioty.

Jako piętnastolatek rozpoczął naukę w jesziwie w Wołożynie. Z oddaniem pogłębiał studia nad Talmudem, ale równocześnie zaczytywał się w świeckiej literaturze europejskiej. Zafascynowany ideami haskali powoli odsuwał się od ortodoksyjnego życia jesziwy. Zaangażował się też w działalność ruchu Chowewej Syjon (Miłośników Syjonu). W 1891 r. w petersburskim piśmie „Ha-Melic” ukazał się jego pierwszy opublikowany tekst poświęcony działalności ruchu Miłośników Syjonu.

W końcu Bialik porzucił jesziwę i wyjechał do Odessy – ówczesnego centrum kultury żydowskiej w południowej części imperium rosyjskiego. Tam próbujący swoich sił jako literat, przede wszystkim poeta, tworzący w jidysz i po hebrajsku, Bialik nawiązał kontakty z wybitnymi postaciami kultury żydowskiej, takimi jak Mosze Lejb Lilienblum czy Achad Ha-Am. Dzięki ich wstawiennictwu w 1892 r. opublikował swój pierwszy wiersz El ha-Cipor (hebr. Do ptaszyny) w antologii Pardes wydawanej przez Jehoszuę Rawnickiego.

W tym samym roku powrócił do Żytomierza. Po śmierci dziadka ożenił się z Manią Awerbuch. Początkowo pracował jako księgowy u teścia w Korostyszewie. Interes drzewny jednak upadł, a Bialik przyjął posadę nauczyciela hebrajskiego w Sosnowcu. Pozostał tam przez trzy lata. W tym czasie jego poezja stawała się coraz bardziej znana. Publikował w cenionym czasopiśmie „Ha-Sziloach” pod redakcją Achad Ha-Ama. Próbował również pisać prozą. Równolegle do utworów hebrajskich powstawały też wiersze w jidysz. I chociaż opublikowano ok. 20 spośród nich, to nawet ta niewielka ilość wystarczyła, aby uznać je za jedne z najlepszych osiągnięć nowoczesnej poezji w języku żydowskim.

Początek XX w. okazał się najbardziej płodnym okresem w życiu Bialika. Wrócił do Odessy, gdzie podjął pracę nauczyciela hebrajskiego w reformowanym chederze. W 1901 r. wydał w Warszawie pierwszą antologię wierszy, która spotkała się z zachwytem zarówno krytyków, jak i czytelników. Bialik został obwołany „poetą odrodzenia narodowego”. Rok później założył własne wydawnictwo Moria. Zasłynęło ono drukowaniem tekstów w nowoczesnym hebrajskim na użytek studentów, a także tłumaczeń literatury jidysz oraz europejskiej na nowoczesny hebrajski.

W 1903 r. Bialik został wysłany przez Żydowską Komisję Historyczną, aby przeprowadzić wywiady ze świadkami pogromu w Kiszyniowie. Swoje przemyślenia zawarł później w poemacie Be-ir ha-harega (hebr. W mieście rzezi). Poemat potępiał pasywną postawę ofiar, zachęcał do samoobrony. 

Od 1904 r. Bialik mieszkał w Warszawie, pracując jako redaktor czasopisma „Ha-Sziloach”. W tym czasie razem z Jehoszuą Rawnickim podjął się planu stworzenia antologii opowieści i legend talmudycznych. W latach 1908–1911 udało im się opublikować Sefer ha-agada w trzech tomach.

W 1919 r. w Odessie Bialik założył kolejne wydawnictwo Dwir. Wkrótce potem Moria została zamknięta. Jednak życie w porewolucyjnej Rosji było coraz trudniejsze. Wydawnictwo Bialika zostało zlikwidowane przez władze. Dzięki wstawiennictwu Maksyma Gorkiego żydowscy pisarze dostali pozwolenie na wyjazd. Przenieśli się do Berlina, który wyrósł w tym czasie na centrum wydawnicze literatury hebrajskiej i jidysz. Działali tu tacy twórcy jak np. Szmuel Josef Agnon, Szymon Dubnow, Uri Cwi Greenberg czy Mosze Kulbak. 

W stolicy Niemiec wydawnictwo Dwir rozkwitło. Wydawało dzieła takich pisarzy jak Szalom Asz, Icchok Lejb Perec, Dawid Friszman, poetów – Szaul Czernichowski, Zalman Szneur i oczywiście sam Bialik.

W 1924 r. Bialik przeniósł się do Palestyny. Zamieszkał w Tel Awiwie, gdzie od razu stał się niezwykle ważną i szanowaną postacią. Zajmował się sprawami wydawnictwa Dwir. Podróżował do Europy i do Stanów Zjednoczonych, aby zainteresować czytelników nowymi publikacjami w języku hebrajskim. Zaangażował się również w działalność Związku Pisarzy Hebrajskich, którego został przewodniczącym. Tworzył wówczas bardzo dużo z myślą o młodych czytelnikach. Nie pisał już poezji dla dorosłych. Warto podkreślić, że wiersze Bialika powstały zgodnie z wymową aszkenazyjską, słowa są akcentowane na przedostatnią sylabę, a nie na ostatnią jak w wymowie sefardyjskiej, którą przyjęto jako obowiązującą w Palestynie, a potem w Izraelu.

Na początku lat 30. XX w. Bialik ciężko zachorował. Leczył się w Wiedniu, zmarł jednak kilka dni po operacji. Jego ciało zostało przetransportowane z Wiednia do Tel Awiwu, gdzie odbył się pogrzeb. Tysiące przybyły złożyć ostatni hołd wieszczowi narodu żydowskiego. Żałobą okryli się też Żydzi w diasporze. W Polsce odbyły się żałobne zebrania organizacji syjonistycznych, wieczory literackie poświęcone jego twórczości. Zgodnie z ostatnią wolą Bialik został pochowany na starym cmentarzu w centrum Tel Awiwu, koło grobu Achad ha-Ama. Swoją posiadłość zapisał miastu Tel Awiw. W budynku mieści się obecnie muzeum Chaima Nachmana Bialika (Beit Bialik) z zachowanym oryginalnym wystrojem z lat 20. XX w., meblami, publikacjami oraz archiwum rękopisów poety.

Wiem, że jak gwiazda w ciemną noc
I moje zgaśnie świtanie,
Lecz niech się gniew mój wśród was tli,
Jak płomień w zgasłym wulkanie
Niech trwa, dopóki grzmotów huk
I morza ryk nie ustanie.

[Wiem, że jak gwiazda…, tł. S. Hirszhorn]

Bibliografia:

• • Chaim Nachman Bialik (w rocznicę śmierci), Łódź 1947.

• Holtzman A., Bialik, Hayim Nahman, w: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Bialik_Hayim_Nahman [dostęp: 01.07.2019].

Biogram Chaima Nachmana Bialika znajdziesz w zakładce “Biogramy”.

THE JEWISH REPORTER WHO BROUGHT THE MOON LANDING INTO AMERICA’S HOMES

JOSEFIN DOLSTEN/JTA

The charismatic television reporter covered all of NASA’s 54 manned space flights during his lifetime.

moon landing space 248.88. (photo credit: )

In the 1960s, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and John Glenn were household names, idolized as god-like figures by a public enraptured by NASA’s forays into space.

There was also Jules Bergman, who almost attained the same fame despite never actually going into space

The charismatic television reporter covered all of NASA’s 54 manned space flights during his lifetime. One of those was Apollo 11, which, 50 years ago, on July 20, 1969, became the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon.

A longtime science editor for ABC News, Bergman was the first network correspondent assigned to cover space full time. That made him “almost as much of a celebrity as the astronauts he covered,” The New York Times wrote in his obituary in 1987.

Bergman, who grew up in New York City, took the subject so seriously that he spent almost as much time as the first astronauts at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.. He said he wanted to give viewers ”not an ivory-tower discussion of science, but an on-the-spot report of discoveries, which are changing the lives of human beings daily.”

CBS’s avuncular anchor Walter Cronkite may have been the best-known “face” of the space program, but the unsmiling, dark-haired Bergman was almost certainly the best prepared.

He took part in various simulations to show viewers the challenges and conditions of space travel, including being subjected to five G’s — five times the force of gravity. He undertook the exercise routine NASA’s astronauts did to prepare themselves for space travel and spent the entirety of a 12-hour broadcast in a harness identical to one worn by astronauts to measure their vital signs.

“I know that he was incredibly passionate about NASA and all of space exploration. That comes across even when you watch him,” his nephew, Mark Bergman, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a phone interview on Wednesday.

The reporter’s legacy lives on even after his death in 1987 at the age of 57. Ten years earlier, Bergman had been diagnosed with a nonmalignant brain tumor and had surgeries to remove a number of growths. He was also suffering from seizures. The National Association of Physician Broadcasters gives out a Jules Bergman award for excellence in reporting. Footage of Bergman is seen in the Hollywood dramas “Apollo 13” and “Hidden Figures,” as well as countless documentaries.

Though he didn’t speak publicly about his Jewish identity, he was perhaps the only Jew whose public image was so tightly bound with the early space program. Judith Resnick became the first Jewish-American to go into space in 1984. Two years later, she was aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, which broke apart shortly after takeoff, killing her and the rest of the crew.

Bergman was widely admired for his work but also had a bit of a reputation among colleagues.

“[H]e was the most disliked person I guess in the program, but he did his homework and he was real good,” Jack King, who served as NASA’s public affairs officer, said in part one of the three-part PBS documentary “Chasing the Moon,” which is airing this month.

Fellow journalist George Alexander also didn’t mince words.

“There were several prima donnas in broadcasting, Jules Bergman being the preeminent example,” Alexander said in the documentary. “Jules wanted you to know that he could have been an astronaut.”

Bergman’s nephew was aware of his reputation, though he said his uncle was “always really nice” to him.

“[H]e was a smart guy doing something that no body else was doing, so there certainly could have been some jealousy from his competition and others in his industry,” he said.

He recalled his uncle giving him and other family members a peek into a world few had access to, inviting them into the press area at the Kennedy Space Center and to ABC’s studio in New York.

“Anytime he was on covering a story it was a big deal,” his nephew said. “A moment to pause at the dinner table, and we all had to shut up and listen.”

Bergman was so enthusiastic about flight that he earned a pilot’s license and wrote about it in the book “Anyone Can Fly.” He won an Emmy award for his documentary “Closeup on Fire” as well as many journalism awards.

In his work as a reporter, he covered the highlights of the space program as well as its tragedies. In January 1967 he reported the grim news that three astronauts had died on the launchpad as fire swept through their Apollo 1 spacecraft.

“They died at T minus 10 minutes into a simulated launch countdown,” he said, “helplessly trapped inside their spacecraft.”

But he also witnessed the triumphs. When Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon, Bergman described the moment for many of the 650 million people worldwide who were watching on television.

“What’s happening now up there is that at this point Aldrin and Armstrong are scheduled to, and we have every reason to think they are, eating dinner, like millions of other Americans,” said Bergman, allowing himself a rare chuckle. “Who can imagine any more unusual place for two Americans to have dinner than on the moon?”

Jewish tune of Bratslav (Ukraine)

  Zakharii TV