{"id":95274,"date":"2022-06-10T17:05:47","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T15:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=95274"},"modified":"2022-05-31T08:38:42","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T06:38:42","slug":"21-05-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=95274","title":{"rendered":"A Jewish-Ukrainian Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>A Jewish-Ukrainian Marriage<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

MAXIM D. SHRAYER<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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A group of ex-Soviets waits for visas and forms unexpected alliances on an Italian beach.
\n.<\/h5>\n

\nCOURTESY THE AUTHOR<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

June 1987. A crowded public beach in the town of Ladispoli on the Tyrrhenian coast. Volcanic sand, black, like refugee\u2019s melancholia; hot, like exile\u2019s purgatory. This is the ex-Soviets\u2019 stomping ground as they\u2014we\u2014wait in transit for visas to the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand …<\/strong><\/p>\n

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A tall hefty woman with a double bun of russet hair came up to us and introduced herself. My parents and I had spread our towels by the water\u2019s edge, right next to her family\u2019s beach encampment with its multiple tote bags, assortment of beach toys and flippers, and piles of clothes anchoring the corners of a floral bedsheet. In her right hand the woman held a plastic bottle by the neck, as though preparing to strangle it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSoloveitchik\u2019s our name,\u201d she said to my mother, with a Ukrainian accent. \u201cWe\u2019re from Lvov. And no, we are not related,\u201d she added cryptically.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And the hefty woman kicked her head back, like a mare shaking a horsefly. She took a long swig of some carbonated nonsense from the plaintively squealing bottle. Her perceptive chocolate-brown eyes finished drilling holes in our foreheads and turned to the water, where three children frolicked together in a way that suggested they were siblings. The eldest, a girl of about 12, supervised the other two, boys of about 8 and 4. The girl and her younger brother looked very much alike, both with kinky black hair and pale skin, bearing a close resemblance to their angular, sluggish father who sat on the floral sheet reading a thick tome. The middle boy was different\u2014bouncy and boisterous.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During that summer my parents and the Soloveitchiks became quite friendly, and I saw them almost daily. Alina did most of the talking in her family, leaving her husband, Leonid, or Lyonya, who had the furry smallish ears and tender protruding face of a giant anteater, to the tasks of carrying their belongings, supervising the children, and being a silent witness to what she called \u201ctelling it like it is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI took after my Ukrainian papa,\u201d Alina liked to repeat. \u201cHe always told people what he thought of them. Some didn\u2019t like it. But they surely respected him. My Yiddishe moma<\/em>, now that\u2019s a different story for you \u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before Alina\u2019s larger-than-life personality entirely occupies the screen of my desktop, I should explain that each time she would introduce herself, Alina would mention that her husband\u2019s family \u201cwere not related.\u201d Related to whom? Of course very few understood what she was talking about. I had no idea until my father, at the time my principal source of Jewish spirituality, had explained that Alina was talking about none other than Joseph Soloveitchik, the great American rabbi and philosopher. The word \u201csoloveitchik<\/em>\u201d means \u201clittle nightingale\u201d in Russian, and it\u2019s not an uncommon Jewish last name. \u201cThere\u2019s more than one little bird by that name,\u201d was Alina\u2019s aphorism for the occasion. How did this woman from Lvov even know about Rav Soloveitchik, and why did she feel compelled to say this to strangers? There were many puzzles to Alina Soloveitchik.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alina immediately designated my mother as her beach mate and confidante. It was her mission to rescue my mother from loneliness that fueled the friendship between the Soloveitchiks and our family. She sensed that my mother was out of sorts. Back in Russia, my mother tended to dominate over her female friends in an understated, trend-setting fashion. But she was so emotionally drained during the first few weeks after leaving Moscow that she let Alina take charge of her spirits.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lyonya and my father would occasionally play a game of chess. A couple of times they went fishing off the jetty, but the bond was really between the women. The Soloveitchiks, Alina, and Lyonya (forgive the accidental dactyl\u2014iambic feet can be too small) were each 40, significantly younger than my parents. They were headed for Cleveland, where Alina\u2019s brother had immigrated eight years earlier with his wife, children, and Alina\u2019s Jewish mother.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou know, this is how G-d likes to tease us,\u201d Alina explained on the second day of our acquaintance. She was holding a clear plastic bag half-filled with cherries, apricots, and plums, to which she helped herself while also smoking a cigarette out of the left corner of her succulent mouth.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cNow my darling brother practically sleeps at the synagogue, and he had himself circumcised and all that nutty business, but he used to be the greatest assimilationist in all of our beautiful city of Lvov. That\u2019s my mother\u2019s thin blood, her Jewish influence. My Ukrainian father\u2014would you believe it\u2014he used to yell at my brother when he tried to tell nasty Jewish jokes he\u2019d pick up from his street pals. Ah, I tell you, nothing\u2019s fair in this world. My brother didn\u2019t even want to go\u2014and he got out in three months. We got stuck for almost 10 years. And my papa\u2019s lying in the grave outside Lvov.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alina spoke with pride and tenderness of her Ukrainian father, a former ace pilot and air force colonel.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHe would have been made a one-star general\u2014he was already in charge of an airbase. But we got it into our stupid heads to leave, and the bastards forced him to retire. You can imagine what they told him upstairs. And through the whole brouhaha he never said so much as one word of reproach to us. Just suffered silently. Didn\u2019t last one year in retirement\u2014a stroke. Not even 65 he was, my papa.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I wondered about Alina\u2019s friendship with my mother, considering she didn\u2019t have one good thing to say about her own mother, with whom she was to be \u201creunited\u201d in America. One got the feeling that Alina blamed her Jewish mother for all their family troubles. Was Alina borderline antisemitic, in the domesticated way Jews sometimes allow themselves to be among other Jews? Today I might say she was self-hating, but back in Ladispoli my vocabulary lacked such terms. I simply sensed Alina\u2019s unease about being Jewish. Yet Jewishness, and particularly Yiddish words and phrases and also those jackdaw intonations, were as much a part of Alina as a lining is part of a dress.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Having had a Ukrainian, non-Jewish father gave Alina a feeling of superiority. Torn between Ukrainians and Jews, she was of two minds about emigration, even after 10 years as a refusenik.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cOh, I tell you, my papa, may he rest in peace instead of flying those crazy loops at their shitty Victory Day parades, my papa did this imitation of my mother\u2019s Aunt Golda who lived in Czernowitz after the war\u2014most of that side of the family were killed in the camps in Transnistria, but Aunt Golda had escaped to the hinterland in \u201841\u2014O my Lord, so you could lose your stomach laughing. My papa was generally very nice to my mother\u2019s meshpocha<\/em>, but there were times he also couldn\u2019t bear it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou Muscovites wouldn\u2019t understand,\u201d she once told us as we joined with the Soloveitchiks for a picnic of tomatoes and cucumbers and scallions and melting cheeses at the beach. \u201cI love Ukraine. I love the folk songs, their bittersweetness. \u2018Nich yakamisyachna, zoryana, yasnaya \/ Vidno, khoch golki zbiray. \/ Viydi, kokhanaya, pratseyu zmorena, khoch na khvilinochky v gay<\/em>\u2019\u2014\u2018Come out, kokhanaya<\/em>, but for a minute, but for a minute to the grove,\u2019\u201d she sang out. Kokhanaya<\/em> in Ukrainian means \u201cbeloved,\u201d the feminine form.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alina was also the first Jew from Ukraine I\u2019d met who was so ardently pro-Ukrainian and so anti-Russian. \u201cUkrainians and Russians are so different,\u201d she liked to repeat. \u201cYou know what my late papa used to say? \u2018The Russians are all drunks. Only Ukrainians and Jews can get along.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And at times she seemed lukewarm toward her own adoring Jewish husband, who, at first glance, walked the dotted line separating a true mensch from a fictional stereotype of the gentle Jewish husband that Slavic mothers sometimes wish for their daughters to marry, in spite of congenital biases against Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cMy Lyonya may seem like a wimp compared to your darling boxer of a husband,\u201d she said to my mother on one occasion, so loudly that not only father and me but half the beach could hear. \u201cBut don\u2019t you assume he cannot stand up for me. You should\u2019ve seen him when the KGB came with a search warrant in \u201883. I felt he would\u2019ve ripped their throats out if they\u2019d so much as touched the children or me.\u201d And Alina shouted, \u201cCareful, Lyonya, don\u2019t drop them,\u201d and waved to her husband as he carried both of their boys on straight arms out of the cresting waves.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ours was, for the most part, a by-day beach friendship. Alina followed ironclad rules of childrearing, according to which children had to be in bed by 8. On rare occasions Alina and Lyonya would go out and join the other sunset fl\u00e2neurs<\/em> on the seaside boulevard. Their own home, two tiny rooms in a cottage they shared with two other refugee families, was much too cramped to receive visitors.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Of the two or three times the Soloveitchiks came over for tea on our balcony, I was home only once, and a long evening it turned out to be. At first my father read a new story he\u2019d just written in Ladispoli. It was set in a refugee hostel outside Vienna, and Alina loved it. Afterwards I read a story of my own, called \u201cLong Nose,\u201d about an Austrian innkeeperess and her Jewish lover, a refugee from the western part of Ukraine. Alina didn\u2019t like it at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYoung man, you\u2019ve got a long way to go. In your father\u2019s story I could feel those words, those colors, it was exactly how I would have described it,\u201d she said without a shade of embarrassment. Lyonya kept silent, munching on an almond cookie.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWell,\u201d Alina said, lighting a cigarette, \u201cI\u2019m no writer, but I also have a story to tell you people. It\u2019s about love. And about me. Here you go.\u201d She uncrossed her legs and continued.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cYou know how these things start. Lyonya and I went to university together. He became a research chemist at a classified facility, and I\u2014a chemistry teacher. Then came the late 1970s, the wave, my father was still living, Ninochka, our eldest, was only 4. Which means I was almost 30\u2014I didn\u2019t want to have more kids right away, you know, kept thinking I\u2019d go back to school for an advanced degree. So we applied, Lyonya was fired and also told at the Visa Office he would never leave. We became refuseniks. Two years later my brother Senya got out. Papa was already dead, and mother went to America with my brother. Like a wagon in autumnal mud, we got stuck. The year was now \u201982, Lyonya worked at a fertilizer factory as foreman, I was still teaching chemistry\u2014they couldn\u2019t get rid of me. Students adored me, and I had the best test scores in the school district.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI was about half my present size, and not so bad looking\u2014wasn\u2019t I, Lyonya, wasn\u2019t I?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou\u2019re still gorgeous, Alinochka,\u201d Lyonya answered placidly.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSure I was, before I had Sashka. I just haven\u2019t dropped all this weight,\u201d Alina said and dashingly slapped herself on the hip.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIn any case, I\u2019m talking about paradoxes of love. I\u2019d known a man for many years \u2026 since high school actually. He was my first. Later we got seriously involved at the university. He became a Komsomol leader, quickly rose through the ranks. He had everything going for him: origins, looks, smarts. Your classic Brezhnevite golden boy from the provinces. He\u2019s now sort of trapped as second secretary of the regional party committee \u2026 He would\u2019ve gone much, much higher if he weren\u2019t such a dirty dog about women. I\u2019d always known what he was all about, but I was drawn to this man, first in high school, then at the university. And especially drawn to him when we hooked up again, already after Lyonya and I became refuseniks. This man has a wife, also Jewish\u2014he has a thing for Jewish chicks. Some fixation. We used to rendezvous in this Olympic gym, where his buddy was the head gymnastics coach\u2014all three of us had gone to high school together. So he let us use his private locker room with a shower. This poison continued, lingering, until we finally got permission in March. I told Lyonya. He got down on his knees and begged me, begged me for hours, to stay with him. For the children\u2019s sake, he said. And so here we are, going to Cleveland.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

As the wife and husband Soloveitchik were getting up from faded canvas chaise lounges, I looked at Alina as discreetly as I could, out of the corner of my eye. Large ropy veins, like aquamarine lizards, climbed up her heavy legs, bared beneath her hiked-up bright green skirt. But her face, still young and glowing, was startling in its dark, brooding Ukrainian beauty. \u201cHow can this be possible?\u201d I remember thinking, \u201cthat I feel attracted to this overweight and loud 40-year-old woman from Lvov?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Soloveitchiks left Italy before us, and it wasn\u2019t for two years that I saw them again. In 1989 I stopped for the night in Cleveland on my way to Bloomington, Indiana, to teach summer school. Alina was working as a lab tech. Lyonya already had two advanced Soviet degrees but went back to school to get an \u201cAmerican Ph.D.\u201d On the inside, their ranch house in Cleveland Heights had the look of a Soviet apartment, and the wife and husband Soloveitchik both looked very Soviet, especially in contrast to their own Americanized children. The oldest, Ninochka, was already in junior high, and the two boys, Sasha and Vovochka, were going to a Jewish middle school.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, over three decades have gone by. Immigrant lives toss people about the country, and they lose touch\u2014for no specific reason. But I also think certain memories and certain persons are most alive and vibrant when left in the past, exactly as we parted with them. I cannot imagine the Ladispoli beach without the Soloveitchiks in the center of the shot. Standing in the middle of a floral sheet under the sand-melting midday sun, Alina is changing out of her black bikini with gold buckles.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cLyonya, get the bebeches<\/em> and the children and let\u2019s be going,\u201d she commands, referring in Yiddish to their beach accoutrements.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAlinochka, hold the towel, they\u2019re staring!\u201d the usually phlegmatic Lyonya loses his nerve.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhat\u2019s the big deal, let them stare all they want. You should be glad your fat wife still has something to offer to the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She turns to my mother, winks, and guffaws so contagiously that my mother cannot help but laugh with Alina Soloveitchik as the rest of us languish on the black sand of Ladispoli. There we\u2019re still waiting for America.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Adapted from Maxim D. Shrayer\u2019s<\/strong> book Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Maxim D. Shrayer<\/strong><\/span><\/a> is an author and a professor at Boston College. His recent books include Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature and A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas. Shrayer\u2019s newest book is Of Politics and Pandemics<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. Follow him on Twitter @MaximDShrayer<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A Jewish-Ukrainian Marriage MAXIM D. SHRAYER A group of ex-Soviets waits for visas and forms unexpected alliances on an Italian beach. . COURTESY THE AUTHOR June 1987. A crowded public beach in the town of Ladispoli on the Tyrrhenian coast. Volcanic sand, black, like refugee\u2019s melancholia; hot, like exile\u2019s purgatory. This is the ex-Soviets\u2019 stomping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95274"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95517,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95274\/revisions\/95517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}