Chapter 2

As the wind speaks in the leaves,
in the shrill of the mountains
and in the roar of the oceans,
so is there but one road
for all things and all beings
and one invisible shaft
that cuts all things in twain.

I learned the history of the Bodrogkeresztur township and of the Jewish community there later in life by proxy, long after I had left it. County Zemplain, where I was born, is located in northeast Hungary. In the year 1726, a handful of Jewish families lived there. They had come from Poland with the help of the great estate owners of that time. The estate owners needed people who knew how to run businesses. They needed accountants, bankers, and managers who could run their estates. They needed professionals, doctors and lawyers. These they could not find among the native peasantry. Hungarian society consisted at that time mainly of two classes: land owners and land workers. Immigrants from Germany and from Poland brought their skills as merchants and artisans, and were invited and welcomed by the Hungarian rulers who were interested in the economic development of their lands. Special protection was extended to these outlanders. The Jews who settled there benefited from this policy.

These first settlers engaged in selling agricultural products. Later they traded in wine and stone from the local quarries, which became a major source of commerce for the Jewish residents. Some of the families became wagoners, transporting visitors to and from the fairs for which Bodrogkeresztur became known. The community as a whole was organized by the end of the eighteenth century.

At this time the native population was not yet poisoned by religious intolerance and prejudice. These were injected into the country by papal legates who came to Hungary in the late 19th century to enforce the anti-Jewish canon laws, as well as by the German immigrants who brought with them their homegrown economic and religious prejudices. However, as early as 1279, a church council in Hungary did prescribe a specific article of clothing to be worn by Jews: a round red cloth sewn on the upper garments on the left side of the chest.

In 1896, the broader Jewish community became divided between the Orthodox (Haredim) and the moderates (Maskilim) at the Jewish Congress. The Bodrogkeresztur Jews aligned themselves with the Orthodox. They established many charitable organizations, and in 1906 they rebuilt a 140-year-old synagogue that had been burned down. This beautiful structure was burned down again in the late 1920s. I remember the event clearly: My father woke us up in the middle of the night to evacuate us from the house. He told me to get dressed and go to our neighbor’s house, whose roof was made of tile and thus safer than ours. He then went to help fight the blaze. Flames were visible everywhere, and cinders flew throughout the town. I realized later that in my haste to get dressed, I put my pants on backward.

During World War I, people from Galicia and other parts of the country came to our town. The Jewish community helped the new settlers, but in the end it wasn’t enough to secure them from hatred. During this period the situation for Jewish people worsened economically and politically. The White Terror—riots against the Jews by right-wing elements of the military—occurred between 1919 and 1921. When Bela Kuhn’s communists failed in their efforts, the Jews were accused of being behind Hungary’s defeat in the war, and an entire Jewish family was murdered by demobilized soldiers. Clerics strived to exclude Jews from civil life, separating them from the rest of the community and reducing them to outcasts. Fortunately for us, the harsh canon laws were not carried out in my town nor in the county of Zemplain.

By 1930, the size of the Jewish community in my town was just over 500. The Jewish elders boasted that our town contained a 200-year-old grave in the Jewish cemetery that belonged to Israel Baal Shem Tov, the famous rabbi who founded the Hasidic movement. Hasidims are known for their joyous celebration of God through dance and song. “Baal Shem Tov” means “a man of the name”—God, or a good man. I never found out if it was true or not. Yet for me and the rest of the children, this story gave us the pride of having the soul of a good man watch over us.

About half of the Jewish families in my town were Hasidim. Baal Shem Tov’s ideas can be summarized in a couple of sentences:

1. God is everywhere; therefore, every person should try to commune with God. Prayer comes from emotion and must be felt. It should be accompanied by dancing and singing.

2. Heaven and earth interact; thus, human actions influence God and the will of God.

The Hasidim consider themselves zadikim, righteous. Their ideas spread quickly from their point of origin in Podolia ( Poland) until they reached my hometown, Bodrogkeresztur. My family and the rest of our Jewish community considered ourselves to be opponents of our Hasidim neighbors. The children of the Hasidim dressed differently from us, as did their parents.

All of our religious services followed the Ashkenazi ritual, and I was taught to become devoted to the study of the Torah (the Bible) and the Talmud (the laws based on the Bible). The town had a kahal board, a community board that was in charge of the synagogue and cemetery and that supervised Jewish education. There was a Jewish academy, Yeshiva, headed by a rabbi. All of us children had to show respect for the rabbi, whether scholars or laymen, learned or not.

My town’s Jewish community had two houses of worship: the Beth Hakneseth synagogue, where most went, and Beth Hamidrash, for the ultra-orthodox. There was also one Protestant church, one Catholic church, and one Serbian Orthodox church in town. Most of the townspeople were of the Roman Catholic faith.

Our town had three grocery stores. One was near the house where I was born, and it also had a tavern where the workers from the stone quarries and the fields congregated. Some stayed late into the night, singing and occasionally fighting without knowing the cause of their fight. The other two stores were owned by two Jewish brothers, one next to the synagogue near the center of the town and the other on the far south of town. Our town had one physician, Dr. Kahn, and a pharmacy. The schoolhouse in the center of town consisted of a single building. The infirmary was next to the school, and the town hall was across the street.

The house of Count Eszterházi owned most of the property in town as well as the rich farmland surrounding the town. Each morning, just before sunrise, the shepherds of cows and pigs gathered their flocks and led them through the town to the east side of the River Bodrog. The flocks grazed during the day, and the shepherds brought them back through town in the evening. The air filled with dust as the herds made their procession.

This was the environment in which I was raised. A small town, my Jewish upbringing, and the surrounding Christian influences all left their imprint on me. It manifested in my greater understanding that all of mankind was one humanity, one family; and that religious bigotry is man-made and does not originate with God. Growing up with and going to school with people who were different than me, working in the fields with them in the summer, I realized that they as well as I could be hurt, feel pain, bleed, and laugh.

Prejudice existed on both sides. Some of the Jewish people referred to the Christians as goy, which means “nation” but is used in a way that means “other than us.” And Christians referred to us as büdos zsido, “dirty Jew.” Both were wrong. One of my best friends was an old Christian gentleman who sat in front of his home before the road, watching the traffic go in and out of town. His name was Matyas, Matthew. I sat beside him, and he filled me with the history of the town and its people. I also had a friend next door who had the same first name as mine. His last name was Bogdán. I was in his home as often as he was in mine. We liked each other very much. The only difference between us was that I had been born Jewish and he Protestant. This did not bother either of us.

My father’s health slowly improved, but he was not strong enough to make his usual travels to neighboring towns and villages to purchase chickens, geese, ducks, and eggs for shipment to Budapest. He borrowed some money and purchased these from local farmers to resell them, making enough money to take care of our weekly expenses. I felt bad for him. I could not help him. I was still attending public school during the day and studying Jewish laws after school.

The spiritual leaders of my community taxed every family so that those who served the community could receive remuneration. Every Monday the shamus collected the taxes. My mother managed to scrape together our share. She saved fillers from the allowance my father gave her. It was heartbreaking to watch my father and mother counting pennies, assigning some for food, some for shoes to be soled, and so on for our other needs. When there was not enough, we had to cut back on the number of meals we ate that week. No one knew what transpired in our household. All this time, we looked clean and neat. Once a year I was privileged to be given a new cap, or my sister Sara a new dress.

My elementary education from kindergarten through sixth grade all took place in the one schoolhouse. It was the same school that my mother and her two brothers had attended, and where my father had been held prisoner by the Romanians.

For my religious education, I was very fortunate to have studied under a man named Samuel Markowitz. He was about five feet tall and well built. He wore a short, neatly trimmed grayish-red beard. He walked with a steady but fast gait, his hands swinging by his side. Under his hat he wore a skullcap so that when he removed his hat to greet someone, his head would always be covered. This denoted that God is always above. No one had a chance to greet Rav Markowitz first, be they adult or child. He always wore a smile, yet he could be stern when he had to be. He had three daughters, the youngest of whom was my age, a curly-haired blonde who looked slightly chubby next to my tall, slim frame.

The rabbi made his living as a book binder, and teaching children augmented his earnings. I was about four years old when I began my education with him. I quickly learned that he was not just a religious teacher but a person who imbued in every child entrusted to his care a feeling of humaneness and a sense of responsibility and caring for one another. By age six I was introduced to the Talmud, the study of rabbinical Judaism, legends, and laws. The Talmud is the basis of modern English and American laws.

It was also at the age of six that my elementary school education started. During kindergarten I had only gone to school in the morning and religious school in the afternoon, but now my secular schooling lasted from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., after which I attended religious school until about 7 p.m. To quench my thirst for knowledge, I would go to Rav Markowitz’s house at 4 a.m. to study. He lived in an apartment in the Goldman building, owned by his father-in-law. Next to Rav Markowitz’s apartment was a room made from a converted woodshed, which is where the classes were held.

Rav Markowitz was a wise man. His words of instructions have comforted me throughout my life, and I reflect upon them frequently. He said, “When a person is young, he does not understand the ways of the world. His parents do things for him. But if he is lucky enough to reach maturity, he must do everything by himself, for himself. Hopefully he will do for others the good that was done for him. If by chance he was abused by those who were supposed to love and guide him, he should endeavor to forgive, but not to forget; and he should seek guidance from those who are wiser than himself who can, and are willing, to help him heal his hurt within.”

These words helped me when my father used to drag me by the hand into the yard and whip me. My father easily lost his temper. He was especially upset when he did not have his way with my mother. I became his whipping post on these occasions. When rats reached the chicken coop or the hens did not lay enough eggs, he was not in the best of moods. I loved him, but I hated him during his angry, selfish moments. On one occasion, I was next door looking at a car that had been purchased by Mr. Waller, the shamus’s brother, to be used as a taxi. My father came out to look for me, angry-looking. He dragged me by my hand. I protested, and that did not sit right with him. He began to slap me around. A woman named Frommer Néni, seeing this, came to interfere, but by then the damage had been done. I sometimes wished his death during these beatings, and I told him so, only to regret the words soon after. But I must have meant them. I had to learn how to forgive—but not to forget—to keep the pain from accumulating inside me.

Did I have a childhood like other children of my generation? In some ways yes, but in others, I don’t know. I am lucky and grateful for my past experiences. Every negative experience in childhood is the soil in which the seed of manhood germinates. Positive experiences may be insufficient to carry one through the travails of life.

Rav Samuel’s wisdom was not just in book learning. He told us that in the early part of the century he emigrated to the United States. He lived in New York in the summertime and slept on the roof of an apartment building. He worked there as a book binder for a while, but he felt uncomfortable in New York and returned to Hungary. His roots were too deeply planted in central Europe. Only his body lived for a time in New York; his heart did not. His mother lived in Slovakia, near Nagymihaly or Munkatch. Every week he sent one or two postcards to her. He wrote to her while we children studied our lesson.

He used to remind us of the fifth “word” of God, “Honor your father and mother.” We asked him, “Why does the Torah say ‘honor’ and not love?” His reply was, “Love must be earned. It cannot be forced or ordered, but to honor we must honor all of life and all the living.” Later in life I learned that honor is important to a person’s health. It is as important as the touch of love, and contributes to overall well being. The absence of honor robs one of human dignity and pride. Without honor a person will not trust himself and, as a consequence, will not trust another. Honor yourself, honor your fellow human beings, and honor all of the living. This should become engraved in one’s heart, mind, and conduct. I want you to know, Sue, my child, that I honor and love you indeed.

Rav Samuel liked to test our ability to reason, our ability to find strength in logic, and our use of our innate common sense. His favorite question to a new student in class was, “Why do we question and answer ourselves all day long?” It baffled the students, and their various answers were often confused. He would also say, “We are two people in one.” We were curious as to what he meant. We knew that we had within us a “yetzer tov” and a “yetzer harah”—a good inclination and an evil inclination—but two people? “Shalom,” he asked me, “which is the superior self in each of us: that which questions forever, or that which has the answers to all problems?”

I quickly replied without thinking, “That which has all the answers.”

“No!” he said adamantly. “Listen: These two selves are two different persons. One belongs to the flesh—‘bassar’—and the other to the Creator, ‘to hakadus barach hu.’ This questioning self is the only one that hears the Creator’s voice.” It took me many years to understand this lesson. “Shalom, remember this,” he told me. “Light comes in light, darkness comes in darkness. Therefore always consider your spirit’s well being, its desires, and your physical wants, and choose accordingly.” He also said, “All light is all knowledge, and when the soul’s knowledge, your soul, manifests in you, remember that it is the Creator.” This was quite a lot to comprehend. It meant that the Creator was not in a far-off place for me, not far away in heaven. Rather, the Creator was in my questioning self, my other self.

I took notes of Rav Samuel’s teachings for future consideration. And ever since then, I have kept notes on all that I have learned. I have them all still, on handwritten and typewritten scraps of paper. I am glad at my age to have had the privilege to be influenced by a good man like Samuel. But my learning from Rav Samuel had to come to an end. Life had a different road for me to walk and a destiny to fulfill.

By the time I was a bar mitzvah I was conversant in the Talmud and its commentaries. I was examined by the rabbis and elders of the town on a Saturday in July 1933 following the fast of the seventeenth of Tamuz. Bar mitzvah and bath mitzvah mean that one is obligated to observe the moral precepts as set forth in the ten commandments. It signifies one’s acceptance of responsibility to live an ethical moral life. Up until then, the candidate is part of one family and community both physically and spiritually. A person begins life as a part of a family, taking its strengths and weaknesses, beliefs, customs, superstitions and fears, hopes, and dreams. But at the bar or bath mitzvah ceremony, the candidate takes on personal responsibility and begins a journey to spiritual and temporal power by pursuing the deeper levels of truth. The person goes beyond the contradictions in family and community teachings. It is a path to spiritual maturity that continues until the time of death. Bar and bath mitzvah, like the Christian sacrament of confirmation, demand that the candidate learns to honor oneself by developing self-respect through accepting responsibility for the person that he or she becomes. It is the beginning of the development of character.

I passed my examination and became eligible to enter the Yeshiva. Here I became my own teacher and also my own student. At the end of each week the rabbi who headed the school examined our progress. He was also a judge, a dayin, who rendered decisions in disputes among the ultra-orthodox community.

A legend circulated in my town and the neighboring villages, believed by Christians and Jews alike, about a Jewish physician who lived in ancient Rome during the time of the general Marcellus Claudius. The legend goes that when Sicily was conquered by the Romans, during the siege of the town of Syracuse, Archimedes was killed and many of his disciples with him. Many Sicilians were massacred or enslaved, and the rest were driven out of Sicily and forced to settle near Tokay and my town.

One of the citizens of Syracuse was a Jewish physician who was well skilled in the sciences of architecture and warfare. As a physician he must have saved many lives during the migration from Sicily. His name was Yachiel Saga, and he became the leader of the exiles.

The Romans knew that this Jew knew how to build fortresses. They promised to spare his and his daughter’s life if he built them a fortress. With the help of the exiled Sicilians, Saga built the fortress at the junction of the River Tisza and the River Bodrog. But when the Roman general had to return to Rome, he forcibly took Saga’s daughter with him.

Saga’s daughter managed to escape and was reunited with her father. In the meantime, Saga took possession of the fortress. He separated the fortress from the countryside by causing the rivers to surround his structure, isolating the Sicilian community from the Romans who were on the opposite side of the river. When the Romans saw what had happened, they laid siege to the fortress. During the battle the doctor was mortally wounded, but before he died he made his daughter promise to bury him according to Jewish tradition.

When I was a boy, the school took us children for an outing to a place called Lebuy, at the junction of the two rivers. There were but a few remnants of what appeared to be a fortress, but no grave site or headstone could be found.