xt7sxk84nk0f https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7sxk84nk0f/data/mets.xml Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass Kentucky Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass 2018-09 Magazine of the Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass, previously named the Central Kentucky Jewish Association and Central Kentucky Jewish Federation. Published ten times annually. The Federation seeks to bring Jewish community members together through holiday parties, lectures, Yiddish courses, meals, and other celebrations of Jewish heritage and culture. They also host fundraisers and provide financial assistance for Jews in need, both locally and around the world. This collection is part of the Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass records, 2016ms010. newsletters 2016ms010 English Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass Inc.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass records Jews -- Kentucky -- Lexington Jews -- History Shalom, September 2018 text image Shalom, September 2018 2018 2018-09 2025 true xt7sxk84nk0f section xt7sxk84nk0f Magazine of the Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass

 

ISSUE 3 | SEPTEMBER 2018

 

 Di— THE B_UEGRASS

Carly Conatser Editor-ln-Chief
Kasey Hall Visual Designer
Daniel Baker Marketing Director, JFB

Tamara Ohayon Executive Director, JFB

Susan Cobin
Betty Nigoff
Hanna B. Smith

The Shalom Magazine staff and editorial board have
the right to edit all content submitted for publication in
Shalom Magazine Writers will receive a copy of their
edited submission before publication The articles,
stories, and advertising in this publication do not
represent either a religious, kashruth, or any other
endorsement on the part ofthe Federation or any other
agency or organizations.

Opinions expressed in Shalom Magazine are not
necessarily those of the Shalom Magazine staff,
editorial board, JFB or its constituentorganizations.
Shalom Magazine is partially supported by the
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Shalom Magazine printed by 859Print

Copyright (C? 2018, Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass,
inc All rights reserved For reprint permission, contact
Car/y Conatser, Editor—in—Chielf Shalom Magazine, at
shalom@jewishlexington,orgt

 

Contents

Letter from the Editor

 

A Fifth Question:
Or Why | Like It Here

 

What Diaspora?

 

Visiting the Diaspora:
A Photo Essay

 

When Home is Elsewhere

 

A Train Ride & A Folksong

 

A Slice of Jewish Brazil:
Who are the Bnei Anusim?

 

The Jewish Community Center
in Krakow

 

An Introduction to Karaism

 

United We Stand

 

So Good To Come Home

 

Adventures in Gustatory
Judaism

 

 

 LETTER FROM THE

EDI TOR

remember being in high school and thinking whenever I
attended services, celebrated a holiday, or participated
in a Jewish communal event that Jews all over the
world were doing the same thing as l was. I felt a sense
of awe, connection, and belonging. It gave me both a
sense of peace and purpose. What came later was learning about the diverse
Jewish experience within the overall context of being Jewish. In my own life, I
have been part of conservative, reform, reconstructionist/renewal, and orthodox
communities and each one has shaped and gifted me with the opportunity to
grow personally and to widen my perspective on the larger Jewish experience.

 

All of these experiences have helped me to author my own. In my short
two years of being a part of the Bluegrass Jewish community, I’ve grown back
into having a stronger Jewish identity. I have returned to work for a Jewish
organization. I have been introduced to Mussar and created a Jewish chair yoga
class guided by my Mussar learning at Temple Adath Israel. I’ve found friends and
community and we’ve authored our own Seder reflecting the values and diversity
of our practice, and soon I will be going to the mikveh for the first time to help me
acknowledge my transition into motherhood.

In this issue, you will encounter stories and images from our diaspora
experience. You’ll hear ideas that echo your own feelings and you’ll probably
learn a little bit more about different ways ofJewish observance both locally
and internationally. It is my hope that this issue helps turn and shift your Jewish
kaleidoscope so you can see the richness and beauty of all that has been and all
that will be to come into your own, and our collective, Jewish lineage.

O2

 

 Or... Why I
Like It Here

he Passover song Ha

Lachma Anya (The Bread

of Affliction) proclaims

“this year we are slaves,
next year we’ll be free. Now we are
here. Next year in Israel.” As if this
weren’t sufficiently aspirational, the
Haggadah concludes on an even
more specific note: “Next year in
Jerusalem." How would we respond
if the “Wicked Child” were to burst
forth from “time out” and ask the
fifth question, a problem strikingly
similar to the one they presented
before: “What do those words mean
to you? We aren’t slaves here, and
we most likely aren’t planning to
spend all future seders in Jerusalem.
The truth is, you have no intention
of moving there next year, do you?”

I'm not going to dwell on
how the state of Israel makes this
diaspora rabbi’s dreams of living
there so difficult. Yes, I do have
those dreams sometimes! The
fact that Reform rabbis aren’t fully
recognized, that our institutions are
not equally funded or that we are
insulted regularly by public servants
in the press are not sufficient
arguments. First, nowhere is perfect.
Israel is not alone in being an
imperfect place. Secondly, they say
nothing about here. What’s keeping
me here? Why do I like being Jewish
here?

I love the challenge of
representing the concerns of
progressive Jews to the rest of
America, and I love how the best
of what America has to offer can
make us better Jews. It’s an honor
and a privilege to pastor and
preach to people who come to our

congregations seeking a sense of
purpose, belonging and affirmation.
It’s an honor and a privilege to teach
Torah to children who soon will be
the next generation of American
Jewish leaders, to contribute to
their critical thinking, to help them
build a library of Jewish memories
and a lens through which to
interpret the challenges they will
face. It’s an honor and a privilege
to go to Frankfort and Washington
D.C., to say our community is
concerned about social justice,
the environment, education, health
care, poverty, racism and violence.
It’s an honor and a privilege to
spend one’s adult life wrestling
with the questions of how Judaism
should inform democratic values
and how democratic values should
inform Judaism.

This place is home
because, from what I see and hear,
the vast majority of us feel needed,
wanted and useful here. At least
l do. Being Jewish is one of the
greatest resources we bring to the
table of American identity. Israel will
forever be the ancestral homeland
of the Jewish people, but America
is my home. I’m proud of what my
family has achieved, from founding
a congregation in Tennessee in
the later half of the 19th century to
founding a Jewish summer camp
in Lexington in the later half of the
20th century. According to family
history, my father was the first
Jewish department chair at the
University of Kentucky’s medical
school. Half a century later, his son
might have a legitimate claim to
be the first Lexington—born rabbi to

O3

 

BY

RABBI DAVID
WIRTSCHAFTER,
rabbi of Temple Adath Israel

serve a Lexington congregation.
When you consider my father’s
mother, Reitza Dine Wirtschafter,
who moved here to be with us in the
1960s and 19705, and my children,
who came here when I moved back
in 2015, we’ve had four generations
of Lexingtonians. As “diaspora
Jews” have said for centuries, “this
is our home now.”

Loyalty to Israel does not
require disparaging the diaspora.
Love of country does not demand

 

6‘ ’9

To understand the world
I must love my home.

 

abandoning our dreams of the
Promised Land. Israel cannot only
be a haven for Jews being driven
to it. Israel needs Jews who are
drawn to it. Despite all its conflicts
and challenges, the achievements
and attributes of Israel remain a
tremendous draw. To the question
ofthe “Wicked Child” I reply, “I really
do want to gather as a family for a
seder in Jerusalem someday, and it
is also my desire to host many more
of them right here."

As Dr. Abraham Joshua
Heschel, an avowed Zionist and
courageous American, stated: “To
understand the world I must love
my home.” Our identity as diaspora
Jews, our experience with what it
is to be a religious minority in an
imperfect and diverse democracy, is
precisely the kind of knowledge our
troubled world needs now. There
is important work to be done here.
The world is counting on us to do it
well.

 

 

 

 

 

 What Diaspora?

BY HAROLD SHERMAN

When I was born in Lexington, KY, there was
already an established Jewish community. There was a
synagogue for Conservative and Orthodox Jews and a
temple for Reform Jews. There were established Jewish-
owned retail businesses as well as people practicing
law--my father, for example--and other professions. It
is not my purpose to give a history lesson, but I have
read that there was a Jewish presence in Lexington as
far back as the early 18005. Even though the Jewish
community was relatively small at the time of my birth,
l didn’t grow up feeling particularly diasporic. Lexington
was the only home I knew until I left for college. I only
spent a year at Washington University in St. Louis, a
school that many East Coast Jews attended, and then
I came back to Lexington to go to the University of
Kentucky, but that’s another story. Later, I went on the
road as a musician, ended up in New York City, and
finally returned to Lexington in 1983 after an eleven-
year absence. Although we would say “Next Year in
Jerusalem” at Passover Seders, it didn’t resonate with
me in the sense of “returning home.” Lexington has
been home most of my life.

I won’t say I read extensively about Jewish
history, but I did get a general take-away from books and
articles I did read: From the Roman Empire’s dispersal of
Jews to the migration to what was known as Palestine
during the late 1800s up to Israel’s independence, the
Diaspora was a universal reality for the world Jewish
community. Although I never had a sense of it, my
grandparents and great aunts and uncles had to make
sometimes daring escapes from Russia and Eastern
Europe. My paternal grandparents escaped from
Imperial Russia, while my maternal grandparents and
siblings fled from the Bolsheviks. My great-uncle Wolf
had to run ahead of the German Army to get to the
Soviet side of Poland during the 1939 Blitzkrieg. Later,
during Germany’s 1941 invasion of Soviet—held territory
and the Soviet Union itself, he had to run again—-this time
making a desperate journey most of the way across the
Soviet Union by train to Vladivostok, where he stowed
away on a freighter headed for San Francisco. These
relatives definitely had a first-hand experience with the
Diaspora. My mother didn’t escape in the same way, but
she was able to get to the United States from Poland in
1938. At the very least, this was a close call.

04

 

My wife Marianne and I took our only European
trip to date in 2005, to Venice, Italy. It was in February,
and northern Italy can get very cold. At one point, the
gondolas were tied up, covered with snow. That was OK.
We were there for the culture. We visited art museums,
caught a performance of a chamber orchestra in what
used be a church performing Vivaldi’s “The Four
Seasons.” We took a train through Tuscanyjust to spend
an afternoon in Florence. We went on tours of historic
landmarks. We saw the museum and tower in Piazza San
Marco and the Museo Ebraico. Museo Ebraico is the site
of the first European Jewish ghetto. ls it irony, karma, full
circle, or some other phrase that applies to the Roman
exile of Jews to the partial Italian acceptance of them
centuries later? On the tour, we learned that Jews were
welcome in Venice, as long as they could be isolated.
It wasn’t really about religion. A favorite expression of
mine is, “follow the money." The local powers—that-be, or
“powers—that—were," didn’t want the Jewish community
to get too much economic power. That seemed to be the
narrative anywhere Jews went in Europe.

I write this in the wake of our country’s embassy
move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. As a holy city to three
religions, Jerusalem is much more thanjust the capital of
a country. There is ongoing conflict, and I don’t have any
solutions. The expression, “home is where the heart is”
can be regarded as a corny cliché, but, historically, Jews’
hearts have been in Jerusalem throughout the Diaspora.
At the risk of sounding overly abstract, I would propose
that each of us recognize an internal Jerusalem, a
personal home within ourselves, for our own peace of
mind and sense of home. I’m working on it.

 

  

A PHOTO ESSAY

Visiting the

BY JUDY & BOB BAUMANN

We love to travel to new places, to meet local people and learn about their communities, their

culture, their food, and their families. Last year, we visited 10 countries in Central and Eastern

Europe and 4 in Central Asia. Before World War ll, many of the countries had large and vibrant

Jewish communities. As we traveled, we visited many synagogues — some are still used by their ‘
small remaining community of Jews; other communities have no Jews. Each visit gave us a

greater appreciation for Jewish life in another part of the world.

Dubrovnik | CROATIA

The Sephardic Synagogue is the oldest Sephardic synagogue in the world and the second oldest synagogue in Europe still

in use today — though mostly on the High Holidays. It was built in the 14th century on the 3rd floor of a narrow building in the [TOT]

Jewish quarter. The Baroque style interior was completed in 1652 and has been preserved. ‘RASS
J

Illl'

ll'l' 1” up
I

  
 

NOVi Said I SERBIA

In January 1942, 3,000
Jews, Armenians, and
gypsies were killed in

Novi Said. Today, no Jews
remain, and the beautiful
synagogue is a concert hall.
The building also houses a
few artifacts from the former
Jewish community.

05

 

 Diaspora

 

Belgrade I SERBIA

alom
iblet Sukkat Shalom is an active synagogue
a? near the center of Belgrade. The
nity.f synagogue was opened in 1926 by
0“ ‘0 Ashkenazim, although today most of
hree . -

its congregants are Sefardim. Rather
m M than destroy it, the Nazis used it as a
MSW brothel. The caretaker with whom we
this hi communicated told us there are about
3“”5 1,300 Jews remaining in Belgrade,
13;; compared with 12,000 who were there
its. before the Nazis invaded.

One of the artifacts on display is an
Elijah’s chair where the sandek sits
during a baby boy’s circumcision.
(From Jewish encyclopedia: At every
circumcision Elijah, “the angel of the
covenant," as he is called in Malachi
__ (iii. 1), is supposed to be seated at the
right hand of the sandek, upon a chair
richly carved and ornamented with
embroideries (“kisse shel Eliyahu").

 

:[ \fl ' A BukharalUZBEKlSTAN

The Bukhara Synagogue, dating from the 16th century is one of

the oldest synagogues in Central Asia and houses a Torah that is
1,000 years old. The synagogue is a protected UNESCO site. Abram
lskhakov, president of the Bukhara Jewish community, told us about
the synagogue, answered questions from our group and posed for
photos. There are about 100-150 Jews left in Bukhara and 20-25
attend Shabbat services. The community’s Hebrew school is open
to children of all denominations. In the main sanctuary and in the
small study room, congregants sit on chairs or padded benches
with a long table in front of them for their books.

   

06

 

  

Samarkand | UZBEKISTAN

On a narrow street in the old part of the city, we visited the
Sephardic synagogue and met its spiritual leader, Rabbi Isaac
Jacobson. The synagogue was built from 1885-1891 and was
renovated in 1988. At its height, there were 35,000 Jews in
Samarkand; now there are 250 and about 15 attend Shabbat
services. A small study room across from the main sanctuary
is used by Samarkand’s small Ashkenazi community. The

two communities come together for holiday services. On the
outskirts of the city is the huge Samarkand Sephardic Jewish
cemetery, with many Soviet—era graves that are above ground
and have an engraved picture of the deceased. Jewish life
in Bukhara and Samarkand is largely supported by the large
community of Bukharan Jews in the States, primarily in NYC.

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

 

Sarajevo l BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA

The Jewish Museum, part of the Sarajevo
Museum complex, is housed in the oldest
synagogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
built in 1581. The building was damaged
several times by fires, then during World
War II, and again during the Bosnian War.
It was most recently restored in 2003 to
resemble the 19th century synagogue.
Only 500 Jews are left in Sarajevo and
most are elderly. Today, services are held
in the Ashkenazi Synagogue across the
river from the old town. In another building
of the museum complex is a Megillat
Esther and a mannequin wearing a dress
of a Jewish woman from Sarajevo.

 

O7

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

Budapest l H U NGARY

The Orthodox Kazinczy Street
Synagogue’s Art Nouveau building was
built in 1910. The Reform movement
had begun in Hungary in 1810 and
wanted to integrate Jews into
contemporary Budapest Hungarian
society. The Orthodox weren’t
interested; they wanted to keep their
traditions and were not interested in
being socially integrated

 WHEN HOME IS ELSEWHERE

On Visiting Berlin

“The past I’ve emerged from is pitted by gaps left by silences stretched across
generations. By losses of language and voice. By human displacements. By immeasurable
dimensions of lives compressed and deflated. And by dlsmembering narratives of who ‘we’

are to each other in this land.”
Lauret Savoy, Trace

he summer before last, I spent six days in Berlin

with my daughters. It was a family trip, but my

husband declined tojoin. Germany is too difficult

for him. And so the three of us rented a fifth floor
walk-up in the bustling Mitte neighborhood. Our landlords
were ltallan. l don’t know how long they’d made their home
in Berlin, but they appeared settled; they owned a shop
two blocks from our flat,

I awoke in the middle of the first night to
thunderous, low flying planes overhead. I had to shake
myself awake to convince myself that they weren’t coming
to get us.

Morning, however, delivered sunshine and charm.
Cattycorner from the flat was a café that sold delicate,
flaky pastries and luxuriant coffee. It was frequented by
locals who arrived on bicycles—toddlers and school-aged
children in tow—and by European tourists in search of
espresso.

Today’s Berlin is an international hub with a
polyglot population that prides itself on tolerance and
inclusiveness. With the knowledge that it was not always so,
the city is awash in museums and monuments struggling to
tell the troubled history of its lost citizens.

ln various parts of the city, brass plates embedded
in the sidewalk mark where Jewish families lived. For these
tens of thousands, Berlin was home. Until it wasn’t. You
could walk by the sidewalk plates and not notice them,
or you could pause to consider those ordinary Berliners
living humdrum lives—frying potatoes and tucking in their
children, planting flowers in the window boxes and doing
the ironing, reading the paper in the living room easy chair.
The plates provide two dates: date of deportation and date

of murder. Other such markers are affixed to the sides of
buildings like misplaced home addresses. The Nazis were
excellent record keepers.

And yet. The plaques recall only an infinitesimal
fraction of the lost. if we attempt to honor our history,
the scale of the crime is too enormous to absorb. Why
the trajectory from ordinary, civilized life to murder on
an incomprehensible scale? How? What was here just a
few short decades ago? These horrifying mysteries drag
alongside me.

We spent a day at the Berlin wall, scrawled with
art accreted over decades; symbolism of an oppression
fresh in memory. “Let’s build a wall,” the authorities
said, erecting a concrete barrier that rendered home
part of a contrived ‘east’ or a coveted ‘west.’ The wall
separated families and lovers, and isolated a regime
whose most productive output was an intricate web of at-
home spymasters—neighbor against neighbor, children
betraying parents. On one side of the wall lay freedom
(and rampant capitalism), on the other, rows of tall, blocky
buildings, unencumbered by trees, and therefore by
shade. Today those apartment blocks house thousands,
many of whom have fled their places of birth. They are
immigrants and they live far from home.

We discovered a photography exhibit behind
the wall that displayed annotated portraits of Syrians.
Boys with stumps for legs dished for the camera. Girls
recounted how they went about searching for food for
their baby brothers. We are repeating our mistakes,
ignoring our obligations. We are not acting. The subtext
for each picture was a family's specific decline into
hell. The children—missing limbs or eyes—spoke in the

When I first became editor-in-chief, I reached out to my Washington DC. writing group for creative writing submissions. I‘m
grateful that Martha volunteered the essay above. l have to say that this is something that I love about community and how we

are able to support each other and make connections from where we have been and where we are going.
- CC.

 

ir'

 

     

  

 

language of hope to describe their ambitions to return
to school; to find their parents; to have an opportunity to
live, once again, in normalcy. Anything, to find home.

We visited the Topography of Terror at the site
of the Nazi Secret State Police Office, the leadership
of the SS, and the Reich Security Main Office. There, a
series of outdoor panels enumerates how the German
government carried out its populist agenda.

In thrall to relentless propaganda about
Aryan supremacy (make Germany Aryan again) laced
with racist lies, an entire nation not only stood by, but
largely assisted as their Jewish, and homosexual, and
communist, and Roma neighbors were stripped of their
rights; denied the ability to own and run businesses
(indeed, to earn a living); robbed of their property; and
finally, murdered. Even though these unlucky Germans—
many of whom served their country in World War l—had
never questioned their German identity, for them, home
meant death.

We cycled to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews
of Europe, a plaza filled with oblong stones of uneven
lengths. Not for the first time, I wondered how to teach
new generations about the scale and scope of the crime.
Berlin may have been the epicenter, but the disease
spread over Europe and North Africa. André Schwarz-
Bart described Drancy, France as “one of many drains
inserted into Europe’s passive flanks...for the herd being
led to the slaughter.” And farther east: “A few freight
trains, a few engineers, a few chemists vanquished that
ancient scapegoat, the Jew of Poland. [From The Last
of the Just, by André Schwarz—Bart, translated from the
French by Stephen Becker]

Methods of slaughter varied according to where
home happened to be: machine guns poised over mass
graves in Lithuania, a ghetto under siege in Warsaw,

humans burnt alive in locked buildings, death by shotgun

and Zyklon B and forced marches and starvation across
Europe. National boundaries proved inadequate to
prevent the transformation of home to killing field.

In silence, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews
of Europe has a moving severity. The day we visited,
children were gleefully playing hide and seek amidst the
stones. Young people picnicked on top of them.

At what point and at what distance from
the events, is the appropriate time to play on such a
memorial? My daughters are part of the last generation
to know Holocaust survivors. We are losing our stories.
When will all those people’s homes be forgotten?

Perhaps that time has already come and gone.

We spent our last afternoon in the former West
Berlin. We stopped at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial
Church (Kaiser Wilhelm Geda‘chtniskirche), heavily
damaged by allied bombing during World War II. The
remains of the original structure is now called ‘Hall
of Remembrance.’ The church, consecrated in 1895,
was once an imposing neo-Gothic structure. Wikipedia
notes that it was built by the Kaiser in opposition to the
organized labor and socialist movements, as a return to
‘traditional’ religious values. Joseph Goebbels criticized
the Gedachtniskirche neighborhood for having too many
low lifes and immigrants—“too cosmopolitan—a meeting
place for different kinds of people, for ‘harlots’ and ‘so—
called men’ and for people speaking ‘all the languages
of the world.‘”

On December 19, 2016, Anis Amri, a man of
Tunisian origin, crashed a truck through a Christmas
market beside this church, killing twelve people and
injuring dozens. He was shot by police in Milan a few
days later.

After visiting the Kaiser Wilhelm Church we
headed to our apartment in the late afternoon heat. On
the way to the train station, we passed huge department
stores, many of them the upscale chains now found in

 

 

  

any city in advanced industrial countries. There was no
sense that people lived in this West Berlin neighborhood,
or in fact that they ever had. There was, instead, a sense
of consumerism unleashed, the streets empty only
because the stores were closed for the day.

Outside the Wittenbergplatz U-Bahn stop was
a large sign, a reminder of the previous destinations
for Germans assembled here: Auschwitz, Stutthof,
Maidanek, Treblinka, Theresienstadt, Buchenwald,
Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbriick, Bergen—Belsen,
Trostenez, Flossenbiirg.

Inside, the station looked as it had in the 19305.
I tried to imagine it filled with people, clutching suitcases
that they would never need, leaving their homes—
forever—uprooted by a once democratically elected
regime that used words and laws to ensure to dispatch
them to their deaths.

One halfofmyfamilyis German. Mygrandmother
was born to German immigrants in New York, and my
grandfather emigrated to this country from Germany at
age sixteen. His brother-in—law, brother-in-law’s second
wife (the first wife—his sister—died in childbirth), and
niece, were murdered at Auschwitz. I knew this growing
up, but it was not framed this way. My grandmother
referred to these facts as “that Nazi business.” My parents
discussed the Holocaust, but never as a personal, family
matter, even though those murdered relatives were my
mother’s uncle and aunt and cousin.

My mother’s home was indisputably in America.
For her mother, my grandmother, the same. For my
grandfather, less so. He died when l was four, so my
memories of him are hazy. He is reported to have
had a heavy German accent, and to have never quite
acclimated to certain seminal American realities—driving
a car, for example—and being married to the fiercely
independent woman who was my grandmother.

After an intense six days, in which we understood
we had not scratched Berlin’s surface, my daughters
continued their travels, and I returned to Washington, DC.
I rode home from the Baltimore airport with a Pakistani
cabbie,

Initially, I didn’t know he was Pakistani, but
somehow the conversation turned in that direction.
Adamant on the importance of being multi—Iingual, he
reminisced fondly about his boyhood. His family spoke
Punjabi at home; he spoke Urdu at school. He and his
brothers enjoyed switching to Punjabi in the schoolyard
to impress their mates. He learned Arabic by studying
the Qur’an and was insisting his two young daughters—
now thoroughly American—do so as well. Hindi and Urdu
speakers understand each other, he said, but can’t read
each other’s languages. Urdu, he noted, is read right to
left in Arabic characters. His English was nuanced and

I
I
I
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i

1 II Ii-——- IIJ

     

  

—II-\
I
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flawless.

His name was Asif and he left me with this
morsel of wisdom, uttered in wistful reverence: Urdu is
the language of poetry. Nothing surpasses it for the way
it captures poetry’s music.

In the first three months of the Trump
administration, arrests of immigrants were up 38%. That
works out to a rate of more than 400 people per day.
The New York Times reported that many of these arrests
were carried out in people’s homes. I

An earlier version of this piece appeared in Cargo Literary
https://cargo/iterary.com/article/home—elsewhere—
visiting—ber/in/ “When Home Elsewhere” is published
here with their kind permission.

 

Martha Anne Toll’s nonfiction has appeared in the NPR, The
Millions, Heck, [PANK], The Nervous Breakdown, Tin House
blag, Bloom, Narrative, and the Washington Independent
Review of Books; her fiction in Slush Pile Magazine, Vol.1
Brooklyn, Yale’s Letters Journal, Poetica E Magazine, Referentia/
Magazine, lnkapture Magazine, and Wild. Her novel in process,
represented by the Einstein Literary Agency, was shortlisted

for the 2016 Mary Rinehart Roberts fiction prize. She directs a
social—justice foundation focused on preventing and ending
homelessness and abolishing the death penalty Please visit her
at marthaannetoll. com and tweet to her at @marthaanneto/l.

 

in

 

  

J n the course of my work as a demographer working
from Brown University, I was fortunate to undertake
‘J research and give lectures in countries all over the
1 world. In many instances, l was accompanied by
my wife, Alice, who also participated in the research
activities. Several of those trips took us to the Soviet
Union and some of the surrounding countries, including
Lithuania.

During our visit to Vilnius, Lithuania in 1991, I
made contacts with a number of officials in the Lithuanian
Jewish community and also with statisticians at the
National University. As a result of those discussions,
I was invited to return to Lithuania to undertake a
population survey of the Jewish community. I had had
extensive experience in survey work in general, and on
Jewish populations in particular, so I saw this request as
a wonderful opportunity to return to Lithuania to help the
local Jewish community assess its population. Since my
mother had lived in Lithuania before emigrating to the
United States in the early part of the twentieth century,
I hoped that I would also be able to explore some
family connections while undertaking the research.
Over the next two years, I raised the necessary funds
and developed a research plan in consultation with the
Lithuanian Jewish officials. Faculty at the University
cooperated to help with the field work. We planned
to return to Lithuania once the survey was almost
completed, and did so in 1994.

Before going to Vilnius, we visited Riga, Latvia for
a few days. The visit was very enjoyable and informative.
We arranged to travel to Vilnius from Riga by train. A
travel agency made the necessary arrangements and
we arrived at the Riga train station 11/2 hours before our
train was due to leave. Our train and its track (No. 2) were

posted on a large board; we followed the information to
find the track. To our surprise, the train posted at that
track was not ours, and was scheduled to leave after our
train. There were no signs anywhere, the information
booth was closed, and the general ticket agent told us
there was no such train. When Alice showed him our
tickets, he still couldn't tell us the proper platform, but
directed us to the international ticket seller.

The international agent “supposed” that ourtrain
was to leave from platform 2, track 1. We went back to the
platform but only the earlier train was posted and there
was no indication of the train to Vilnius. Furthermore,
no one on the platform spoke English or German; all
they replied to our questions was “Vlov.” Finally, about
15 minutes before the scheduled departure, we heard
someone speaking English. We rushed over to them.
They were a young couple in the Peace Corps posted in
Latvia. We enlisted their help and they checked around
to confirm that we were in the right place. They even
helped carry our two heavy suitcases up the steep flight
of stairs to the track.

Sure enough, the train - of the Soviet variety
— arrived and left right on schedule. We settled into
our compartment— the only ones in that compartment,
although we saw that others were filling the remainder
of the railroad car. They included a Russian couple who
were living in Riga. She spoke a little English, and we
learned that her husband was an artist and they were
going to Hungary for an art exhibit.

The attendant in our train car was ajolly looking,
grandmotherly lady with short white hair and a mouth fu