Encounters in Russia
Greenberg, Blu
ENCOUNTERS IN RUSSIA BLU GREEN BERG The truth is that I really did not want to go to Russia. Each day, after we had finally applied, I would search the mail, hoping to find a visa rejection from...
...KGB...
...A gutsy fellow, Lev said to them, "Whatever secrets I knew, I already gave to them long ago, so now either put me in prison, or let me go...
...The funeral will be tomorrow...
...He is hoping for a call from Chicago, where his wife is due to give birth this very night...
...The visitor knows something about them, and is sympathetic, compassionate, reaches out...
...This year...
...Reject their plan for emigration...
...From Amsterdam on, we barely speak...
...Abezgauz will walk right past them, look right through them...
...Afterwards, they flood him with questions—on many issues...
...The bell rings...
...Ilya "declassed" himself before applying, leaving a highly valued and well-paid job as an electronics engineer...
...If there is nothing illegal to be seized, at least they can intimidate...
...My husband is explaining the philosophy and practice of Shabbat to them...
...At the very least, the next visitor will be still better informed...
...But that night, after our last seminar, the fear grips me, overwhelms me...
...Some of these men and women understand Buber and Maimonides, yet have never heard or read of the prophet Isaiah...
...Azbel, a world famous physicist, quickly reads the letter...
...There have been many encounters, some with his old colonel friends who now sit in strategic positions...
...And where there is no teacher from the free world, one of them prepares to teach the seminar...
...In their minds they have just now moved Judaism out of the Eighteenth Century, only recently become aware that Judaism can be considered a "modern" religion (whatever that means...
...I had never really understood the full meaning of the old rally chant, "Let them live or let them leave...
...there is more to be done before the next visitor arrives...
...Arrival The visas come...
...Azbel leaves his seat, and talks quietly at the door...
...Four books he bans as "harmful to the Soviet Union"—one on Jewish history with a chapter on Soviet Jewry, one a history of Judaism with a single paragraph referring to Soviet Jews during the Holocaust, one with a section on the philosophy of Shestov, a Russian Jewish philosopher I had never heard of until that moment, and the fourth an innocuous selection on Jewish thought...
...The Brailovskys...
...so many dismissed Birnbaum as a mad prophet...
...We have names of people to see, messages to deliver, gifts to transmit...
...Meanwhile, every morning he goes about his business, giving succor to the Minsk refuseniks—and to other Jews who are hesitantly coming out of the closet...
...The monster/inspector/human wants to confiscate nine of our Jewish books, and we spend the next two hours at the Moscow airport arguing with him, book by book, chapter by chapter, paragraph—literally—by paragraph...
...Departure Though we had not been interfered with during our trip, the day before we are to leave, we are summoned to a "meeting" with the "hotel administrator," a man unknown to the rest of the hotel staff, who sits in an unmarked office with no secretary in the anteroom, who wears an Intourist pin in his lapel in an attempt to legitimate his presence in the hotel...
...We go to see the Jewish artists' exhibition organized by a man named Abezgauz in Leningrad...
...In 1961 Professor Ginsberg decided that he wanted to emigrate to Israel...
...Suddenly, it doesn't seem to matter...
...Even the fact that co-workers and apartment neighbors would no longer speak to them was not too great a price to pay for their dreams—as long as the children still played with their daughter...
...With all their tsores, they managed to think up and carry out this gracious act of gratitude...
...see you again...
...the blood rises in his face, up to his blond eyebrows...
...My husband was invited to give a seminar in each of the cities we visited...
...We are overjoyed to learn it costs only 35 rubles (about $50), and we verbally purchase it on the spot...
...Here, we can't even teach it to Jews...
...Mine," I reply, without batting a lash...
...Then they helped him become one...
...Why should it bother Ilya, who was thrown out of the Moscow Yeshiva upon applying for a visa...
...His cousin, Zalman Shazar, was then President...
...Week after week this went on, but nothing of value was ever uncovered...
...But who would take your courses...
...If you tell us what it is, we will let you go through...
...The other questions we do not ask: What must it be like to be in labor with the first child and not to have your husband nearby...
...What comes their way is quite haphazard...
...She hails a taxi for us, gives the driver our address...
...Or maybe a few months beyond that...
...if not, we'll detain you...
...The border guards suspected him of smuggling, but each time they overturned the contents of his wheelbarrow, all they could find was sand, rocks or hay...
...In laughter, we learn why: though Negev had won first prize in the Leningrad Dog Fair two years earlier, the Ginsbergs refrained from entering him in the following fairs...
...Not to be there, not even to know—these are conditions of war...
...Finally, Ilya and Eleanore decided that they also wanted to live among their friends...
...And then again, what was Ilya doing, what was he thinking from 1953 until 1973, when he decided to go to Israel...
...People The Reines Family...
...Abezgauz...
...Da-Svendanya...
...For the most part, they are exceptionally intelligent people and can comprehend and integrate whatever comes their way...
...Each day, after we had finally applied, I would search the mail, hoping to find a visa rejection from the Soviet Embassy...
...But Lev refused...
...Instead, we are free to concentrate on the people whom we meet...
...Aaronson...
...From that encounter on, we do not worry whether we are being followed (probably) or overheard (most certainly...
...Yet things could be worse: what if he went eagerly toward that encounter...
...a funny little face, a smile that makes you want to laugh at her even as you laugh with her...
...Death unites...
...Abezgauz, staring down these blue-eyed red armbands...
...communal kitchen and bathroom, a modest place, all aglow with the sights and sounds of then-new baby, Chanah, six months old...
...He is overjoyed to receive the invitation...
...Since the Essas' phone had been cut, their friends sent them a telegram to notify them of the switch...
...But I did not want to go to Russia...
...Abezgauz accompanying us down two flights of stairs—where another four KGB wait...
...I knew most of it—the refuseniks who were captives in their own countries, out of work, out of joint with society, many thrown into jail, or into mental institutions...
...They stripped him of his medals, his rank, his pension...
...Igor Arenski, the end of the line of seven generations of rabbis____ Now, in a rich Yiddish, Lev talks about himself...
...A re-fusenik cousin would have been a distinct liability for the newly-wed, who was trying to carve a place in the sun for himself in the Soviet Union...
...But now, incredibly, we hear these Tarbutnik refuseniks talk of the need to couple the struggle for aliyah with a struggle to nurture Jewish identity and learning right there...
...The police took out its entire contents: one copy of the fourth issue of Tarbut, a Jewish culture magazine published samizdat (underground...
...He always used to say, 'I can live with my enemies, but I want to die amongst my friends...
...But more and more of our friends were returning from Russia, some for the second or third time, and they invariably told of the importance of direct contact, of how much they craved our visits, and when, finally, our niece—our niece—returned, last year, I could no longer say, "I've done enough, I've done my best...
...So Lev Ovsischer will remain in limbo, one anxious eye on the clock, one anxious ear turned inward on the murmurings of creeping age...
...I feel the urge to run after her, accompany her past the hostile firing squad, but I know that slender little Mrs...
...The night before, as we packed ever so carefully, Yitzchak told me one of his favorite jokes: A European farmer was observed taking a loaded wheelbarrow over the border three or four times a week...
...I thought of our own 15-year-old son whose parents, teachers, and peers are all pulling together for him—and still adolescence is no picnic...
...Luckily so, since Eleanore was immediately fired from her job as an engineer...
...At first, I think them out of their minds...
...Instead, our worst fear becomes reality...
...I'm not waiting four years, I'm waiting two thousand years...
...Although it is not the sort of job for which one trains for years at an advanced institute, he was happy at least to be working and earning a hundred rubles a month...
...We learn that Rosen's uncle will not be buried in the Jewish cemetery in Leningrad...
...He makes more accusations, we hold our own, the offensive changes hands from moment to moment...
...Already homesick, we are on our way...
...Why waste the rest of your life...
...So much so that a visitor can show up unannounced on Friday morning, and by Sunday, find him/herself lecturing to a group of 30 or 40 young and middle-aged Jews who hang on to every word, so precious is its sound...
...Eleanore has talked about her father-in-law who was also her teacher, a professor of electronics at the Institute in Leningrad...
...But you've wasted four years of your life already and there's no chance of your getting out for another four years...
...As we part at the door, the daughter joins in the farewell...
...Answer: Tomorrow...
...They never married, he answers, because together they never would have gotten out...
...I brace myself against my usual modesty...
...The Rosens...
...So, a Jew who wants to lie in death amongst his people must pay a bribe to the officials for the privilege of being buried on top of an existing grave...
...They know what the visitor himself does not yet know...
...Our only thought is to be as inconspicuous as possible, to slide past the border officials intact...
...Surely his letter—all of their letters—will be part of the next generation's poetry, part of its history, part of its faith...
...In April of 19611 walked up Bennett Avenue in Washington Blu Greenberg teaches Jewish studies at Mount Saint Vincent College and writes on contemporary Jewish issues...
...Surely the KGB had filed a report of the time he, together with several other rabbis, had chained themselves in protest to the gates of the Soviet United Nations Mission...
...Lev Ovsischer...
...To our traditional greeting, "Next year in Jerusalem," they swiftly reply, "This year in Jerusalem...
...We do not...
...She was able to leave with her parents before the baby "showed...
...Members of the collective didn't recognize him and they looked to see his signature...
...that already puts him "outside the pale...
...Next week...
...So Lev replied, "And I always thought you were a smart man, but you don't understand at all...
...Five years to be "cleansed of military secrets," five years of waiting, of searches, of confrontations with OVIR, so that Chanah will only have to wait a few months...
...There had been a robbery nearby, and, as a possible suspect, Fain now had to open his briefcase...
...Suddenly, the sound of patting my own back rang hollow...
...Eight secret police for a Jewish artist's modest exhibition...
...They give him more details of their plight, so that he will be impelled to try harder, be less likely to forget...
...They interrupt what they are doing and gather about the visitor...
...We have brought a letter for Azbel from the president of the University of Pennsylvania—a formal invitation to join the Pennsylvania faculty...
...Jews who never saw a letter of Hebrew in all their youth, who now ask for a typewriter with Hebrew characters, and for Hebrew children's stories for their own families...
...Lev has just returned from his morning rounds, answering the questions of other Jews in Minsk...
...At the appointed time, the visitor looks at his watch, embraces his new friends, assures them of his love and good intentions, and says, "We shall meet again in the promised land...
...Ten minutes later, two others were on his trail...
...But to the funeral Rosen is invited...
...In her new school, some distance away, where the school administrator was unaware that this 14-year-old girl was a refusenik, her grades were again the best in her class...
...But why do they let you teach there, and why would a Christian want to study about Judaism...
...Meaning, of course, the exit visa for which she and her family have been waiting in Leningrad for four years, four jobless years, sustained only by visitors from abroad and a cohesive group of refuseniks...
...The petty and the poignant: we are leaving the Ginsbergs, a refusenik couple in their mid-thirties, both very attractive...
...we'll give you back your rank and your pension...
...Yet why should this bother Ilya...
...And turns into a blessing in disguise...
...To this end, they have organized a network of Jewish seminars, a kind of ad hoc, unsanctioned but well-run educational system...
...We had an appointment to meet Ilya and Anya Essas at our hotel on Friday evening...
...No wonder young Brai-lovsky goes off to school every morning with a heavy heart, with great dread of the unavoidable encounter...
...Genuine feelings, and easy mitz-vah points...
...Incredibly, the lecture goes right on...
...As time went on, I must confess the rallies became a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon with the family, pushing a stroller or two, ice cream from the vendors, pennies for the pushkas, seeing old friends, feeling good about doing our Jewish thing, telling ourselves that we were teaching our children the meaning of Jewish responsibility...
...So they have not pinned all their hopes on him...
...Again, the ridiculous hope against hope, without which he could never have survived this sheer madness...
...The Ginsbergs...
...Forever...
...the police have come to summon him to an interrogation set for two days hence...
...Surely they must know that my husband, Yitz-chak, had been one of the founders of the Center for Soviet Jewry...
...And leaves...
...One of the weekly seminars takes place in the apartment of Mark Azbel, a famous Soviet Physicist...
...Ilya gambled that he would not be fired from his new nonclassified job as a common laborer in the building trades...
...Despite their thoroughness, the search yields nothing...
...His smile is as uncon-trived as it is unexpected...
...And here we are—two Americans and Benjamin Fain walking along Nevskig Boulevard in Moscow, enjoying this delicious anecdote...
...What must it be like to be unable to hold your wife in your arms and speak tenderly to each other at this time...
...One woman he tries to soothe is Mrs...
...A unilateral thrust for aliyah means the abandonment of these Jews and their children—and, therefore, an eventual undermining of the aliyah movement itself...
...Reality is less threatening than fantasy...
...Our first Shab-bat in Moscow, and we are sitting in the apartment of a Moscow refusenik...
...It took him 10 years to convince me that we should go...
...The night before, while we were there, the plainclothes policeman, a fellow with a macabre sense of humor, signed the guest book on his way out...
...They want to know what happens when traditional Judaism confronts modern society...
...So what's another few years...
...But not one of the 20 or 30 visitors leaves...
...We cross the courtyard...
...We chastise him for making such false claims...
...We carry with us Jewish books, and Israeli records, and four suitcases crammed with things tourists don't usually carry for a two-week visit...
...Abezgauz and the others take it all very calmly...
...Like a scene from Pascal: they are riding in a caboose for which they have no keys...
...When he applied to leave for Israel, his visa application was refused...
...it can no longer be stayed by a calm tone or a determined effort...
...Where does this brave calm come from...
...And we are afraid, afraid of the KGB whose thousand eyes and ears give our brothers and sisters no peace...
...and my heart isn't even pounding...
...Some lectures are in the sciences, so that physicists and mathematicians barred from work can keep up with their fields...
...They think she's beautiful, the best thing that ever happened to them in Russia...
...In her arms she cradles a Yorkshire terrier—Negev was its name— with shiny black hair falling over its eyes...
...End of robbery case...
...even about the weather we whisper...
...Back to work...
...He refused to let them search his briefcase, asserting his Soviet citizen's rights...
...Finally, they said to him, "Look, we know you're smuggling in something...
...Each day, after we had finally applied, I would search the mail, hoping to find a visa rejection from the Soviet Embassy...
...the other, a devoted son who is busy changing his name from Israel Aaronson to Igor Arenski— and having his children's passports stamped Beilorussian, the nationality of his Christian wife...
...We return the next evening but Abezgauz is not there...
...Five hours wasted because of an intercepted telegram, which they found when they returned home...
...We go to the synagogue with Rosen that evening...
...The inspector goes through my baggage, pulling out a second set of phylacteries which we had brought to give away, and raises his brows in surprise...
...So Ilya and Anya came to our hotel, waited in vain in the lobby for three hours and then traveled another hour to return home...
...his memories will fade, his resolve will weaken, his life will resume...
...visitors have spoken about Buber and Maimonides, but no one yet has come to talk about Isaiah...
...The risks of this double challenge to the Soviet system are staggering...
...The KGB inspector is human (even pleasant), no thousand eyes...
...Our plans were changed to meet at the apartment of another refusenik, Benjamin Fain, to celebrate Shabbat with a larger group...
...otherwise, the tone is quite civil, despite its ugly context and content...
...Waiting six years...
...and Mrs...
...On a trip to Riga, Benjamin Fain was stopped by the KGB...
...Gradually, the movement picked up strength, mostly through youth who kept asking their elders, "Why didn't you____" Then, Elie Wiesel's The Jews of Silence further pushed the issue into the public arena...
...It is interesting that the two most central events in the consciousness of American Jews—the Holocaust and the State of Israel—are also their central concerns, and they want to hear an American speak on these issues...
...The encounter ends in a draw—he hasn't managed to frighten us...
...I had read, and heard, and wept, and, for me, that was enough...
...The old Jewish cemetery was all filled several years ago and no new one may be built...
...Azbel...
...Before The truth is that I really did not want to go to Russia...
...During my husband's seminar in Azbel's home, the other reality intrudes...
...Midnight in Leningrad, and a lusty rendition of Hatikvah from a dozen Russian Jews, ages 13 to 70...
...Rosen tells us, without any rancor, that when his uncle's son was married a few months ago, Rosen was not invited...
...In 1967, right after the Six Day War, Lev's cronies in the upper army echelons called him in for a favor—to join a group of leading Jews in denouncing Israel...
...Every day, Mrs...
...A refusenik black terrier...
...They could go through our baggage from top to bottom and they would find nothing...
...Fingering a frayed pink folder, which must have been used in a thousand other such interrogations, he tells us that he has letters from people in the Soviet Union saying that we are agitators, provocateurs, who came to Russia to propagandize...
...No jaywalking, no black market currency exchange, no dope peddling, no wisecracks in front of Lenin's tomb, and we will be safe...
...The night we are with them, as the visitors begin to leave, 15-year-old Luba Reines sits down at the piano and plays Hatikvah...
...And now we "smuggled out" our empty suitcases and a headful of memories and emotions from each encounter—and these tales to share with other Jews...
...It is hard for me to comprehend the wildly uneven knowledge that characterizes these au-todidacts...
...So it turns out that we are not subversive troublemakers, but examples of that growing and desirable import called "Tour-istes-Americaskijs...
...they've told him as much...
...Azbel writes a letter of overflowing thanks to his Philadelphia sponsors, his lifeline...
...Surely they would turn us down...
...at the door is an anti-Semite, in KGB clothing...
...You're not young anymore...
...The Tarbutniks...
...Young men in their twenties and thirties who spearhead the Jewish culture drive in Moscow, who at great personal risk translate and circulate Jewish history and philosophy books smuggled in from America are now celebrating Shabbat for the first time in their lives...
...He's the only one in his high school class not permitted to join the Komsommol...
...It was ourselves that we had "smuggled" in, our Jewish souls, our Jewish knowledge, our Jewish sense of "we are one...
...We visit the home of Solomon Rosen...
...This interrogator is a middle-aged man, with sharp handsome features, graying hair, and eyes of steel to match...
...In 1971, the opening came and he immediately left Russia for Tel Aviv, despite the fact that he and his wife were leaving Ilya and family behind, maybe forever...
...for the time being, Women's Lib outsmarts the KGB...
...A friend has told me that if they threatened to do a body search at the airport, I should insist on it being done in full view, and not in some small, closed-off room...
...They trust the visitor...
...No phone...
...Heights, one drizzly Sunday afternoon, seven months pregnant, in a homemade pink and purple maternity dress that suddenly seemed garish under the staid Jewish eyes of the neighborhood, eyes that stared in surprise at this rag-tag collection of fifty marchers...
...Is there a later one...
...it takes great restraint not to smile back and drop the whole debate...
...Do you think I'd sell my dream for three hundred rubles a month...
...No need for it," said the Soviets...
...He had heard that a formal invitation had been sent months ago, but none had reached him...
...But this is Russia, where old colonels may not fade away...
...Five years as an elevator operator, forget the advanced degrees...
...He had thought it was all over right then...
...The Soviets, we have come to realize, appreciate detente and American tourism too much to jeopardize them with any embarrassing incidents...
...But a moment later I am called forth, by Azbel...
...One of the visitors that night is Aronovich, who shifts a bit nervously in his seat as the evening wears on...
...So too with us...
...Threats and a few lapses into shouting and fist pounding are all the luxuries he will allow himself...
...Recently, one of his "friends" called him in and said, "Lev, I can't understand you...
...Some have read through the entire Passover Haggadah, but many of them have never once heard a Friday night Kid-dush...
...After the books, and the debate, he again ruffles through my husband's suitcase, coming across his tallit and t'fillin...
...This is how they keep tabs, how they care for each other...
...Moments later we embarras-sedly learn that their English is not so good—and $500 is a bit beyond our range...
...Write a few letters, sign a few petitions, march, chant, care...
...I, who am shaken to tears if the men in blue catch me running a red light and who have lost every game of stare that strangers ever challenged on the BMT, find myself playing Mrs...
...It was intercepted, and those who intercepted it thought the finer torment would be to deliver it after the appointed hour...
...The KGB know that Azbel will be at home at seminar time...
...I always thought you were such a smart man...
...A Jewish dog...
...Nevertheless, we will try to get the painting out, for if Abezgauz ever leaves, all his work must be left behind...
...The farmer thought a moment and decided the truth would be the wiser choice...
...Before we actually embark, we are given the "royal treatment," a luggage search and questioning that lasts more than an hour...
...You can make up your own mind...
...The second night, the police come again, this time four of them, wearing identifying armbands...
...All these must be given a chance at Jewishness...
...But we persist, and he returns five of the nine...
...After the lecture, Azbel tells the group of the scheduled call-in...
...Every now and again, the door opens, and a visitor is flung upon them without warning...
...How else but in laughter can a Russian ex-physicist tell this story to two American Jews...
...he asks...
...Later we learn that it was just a routine investigation, but meanwhile, beneath the calm tone, I detect a tremble in his voice...
...Thankfully, all my inspector does is to take me aside, glance knowingly at my pelvis, and ask if I have anything concealed...
...Prize dogs cannot leave the country...
...Wonder where the Soviet Jews derived their strength, where their yearning, how it is that yearning runs so deep, and so much deeper still...
...still, a formal invitation—finally in hand—might be just the straw to break the Soviet might, just the right "gimmick" to break through the Soviet system...
...That was four years ago...
...I remember my son JJ's 4th grade riddle: What is a day that never arrives...
...His colleagues were shocked, for they knew that he had never been a Zionist...
...Reines, Sr., comes home from her errands with only one question: "Did it come...
...Yitzchak and I are each presented with an enameled silver pin—scales of justice and some Russian words etched into its face...
...So it is with great relief that we prepare to depart the next morning, a relief so full that it allows no room for guilt at leaving the others behind...
...We leave, Mrs...
...So the Tarbutniks ask for books, religious objects, lecturers from abroad to teach and strengthen them in their Jewishness...
...It was unthinkable in those days to tackle the all-powerful Soviet system...
...Ilya and Anaya Essas...
...These are not the timid, fearful Russian Jews I had always read about...
...Christians...
...In every city there are Tarbutniks: Jews who, while stoically awaiting their visas, simultaneously press for the right to foster Jewish culture within the Soviet Union...
...Several others are there...
...Tomorrow...
...Whose is this...
...Every day she cries to Lev-cries over her two children: one, a beloved daughter, now in Jerusalem, for whom she daily pines...
...They ask in a hundred different ways the question which Jews of all shades have always asked, everywhere: "What does it mean to be a Jew...
...My husband replies, "That's my prayer shawl...
...At another session with OVIR, the official invoked the formal reason for denying visas to ex-soldiers: to prevent them from bringing out military secrets to Israel...
...They are not sure whether I am kidding them when I say I teach Judaism at a Catholic college...
...At the impressionable age of 16, he lived through the Stalinist doctors' plot, and saw the foreshadowed destruction and exile of the Jews, saw it in the eyes of his classmates, heard it in the comments on the street, felt it in signals from former family friends...
...While we are with Rosen, a stepbrother comes in to inform him of an uncle's death...
...He has a magnificent painting of a shtetl Jew— the face a likeness of himself— standing straight-spined atop a mountain, gazing out over the green Russian countryside...
...Add to that an interview the boy must contend with each morning in the principal's office: "Your parents are doing a foolish thing, harmful to you and betraying the country...
...Give up this Israel business...
...In passing, they talk about their 15-year-old son...
...They give this to all the foreigners who participate in the seminar...
...The people at Penn wonder why Azbel hasn't answered three previous invitations...
...It takes me a minute to understand...
...In beautiful calligraphy at the top are the words, "And he looked for the last time at the land of his birth and proceeded to go home to his land...
...An Englishman named Jacob Birnbaum had come to tell us of the Soviet Jews, of the three million who had been spared the first Holocaust and who were now threatened by a second, a spiritual holocaust...
...This one we already have in our office...
...It's enough for us to manage...
...His wife, a little slip of a thing, is "in charge...
...And whose is this...
...Almost...
...Since then he has been a terrible nuisance to them...
...A decade ago, Orthodox Jews might not have thought of that, a decade from now it may no longer be a joke...
...Again, the hope, the expectation, the good tidings tomorrow...
...How did she get out," we ask, "and not you...
...Wheelbarrows," he answered...
...They argue, quite convincingly, that not every Jew will want to leave Mother Russia—that some will not part from family, friends, language, all that is familiar, that many fear to become refugees or do not have the stamina to become refuseniks, that some, perhaps even many, will not be allowed to leave...
...We don't even turn around to see...
...Some seminars are in the Hebrew language, some on life and adjustment in Israel, some on Jewish history and culture...
...Home is a three room apartment with laundry drying on lines strung across the little kitchen, Jewish pictures and symbols hung on the living room walls, and Josef and Esther sleeping in the bedroom, little Ones whose nursery school lives are as yet uncluttered by politics, OVIR (Office of Visa Regulation), and the like...
...The refuseniks will not grant the intruder the victory of breaking up the seminar...
...They are hus-band-and-wife physicists, a lovely, soft-spoken, intelligent couple, waiting three years now...
...Five years he worked for Chanah, he says...
...Last year, they had to switch her from one school to another, for, though she had always been a straight-A student, she suddenly began to receive barely passing grades...
...They also want everyone else to know that they know...
...That strange combination of sadness and optimism and strength...
Vol. 2 • February 1977 • No. 5
