CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 33Visible text2 paragraphs
MY FATHER had a weakness for the momentous, whereas my mother was fascinated by yearning and surrender. My father was an enthusiastic admirer of Abraham Lincoln, Louis Pasteur, and the speeches of Churchill, "blood, sweat, and tears," "never have so many owed so much," "we shall fight them on the beaches. " My mother, with a gentle smile, identified with the poetry of Rahel, "I have not sung to you, my land, or praised your name with deeds of heroism, only a path have my feet trodden down. " My father, at the kitchen sink, would suddenly erupt into a spirited recital, with no prior warning, of Tchernikhowsky:
".and in this Land will rise a brood / that breaks its iron chains / looking the light straight in the eye! " Or sometimes Jabotinsky: ". Jotapata, Masada / and captured Beitar / shall rise again in might and splendor! O Hebrew-whether pauper, / slave, or wanderer / you were born a prince / crowned with David's royal diadem. "When the spirit descended upon him, Father would roar out, with a tunelessness that would startle the dead, Tchernikhowsky's "My country, oh my land, bare rock-covered highland! " Until Mother had to remind him that the Lembergs next door and probably the other neighbors, the Buchovskis and the Rosendorffs, must be listening to his recital and laughing, whereupon father would stop sheepishly, with an embarrassed smile, as though he had been caught stealing sweets.