What has happened in the meantime to blur the memory of Jews without a country?
Published: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 10:50 AM
There is a picture that shows the family, father, mother, sister, baby brother and how it was when they arrived in America.
They arrived, by coincidence, the first night of Passover, 1944. The place was Philadelphia, U.S.A. This too was coincidence.
They came over on a ship named the Serpa Pinto. This was a ship that was blessed as an earlier ship, the St. Louis, had been cursed.
This family were not supposed to be in Philadelphia or anywhere else in America.
The Roosevelt administration did not want them or any other Jews fleeing Hitler, or perhaps FDR did not want too many. A few got in, and stayed.
So there were rules that limited access, known as a quota.
He says he loves Israel BUT. He is among the many American Jews who love Israel BUT.
The Serpa Pinto had left Portugal destined for Canada, but Canada also had a quota, and this quota was firmly enforced by the government.
Asked how many Jewish refugees Canada would accept, a spokesman for Prime Minister Mackenzie King declared, “None is too many.”
But this ship, as opposed to the St. Louis, did not turn back to deliver its passengers into the waiting arms of the Gestapo.
The Serpa Pinto had made it this far through the high seas patrolled by German U-Boats that had been firing torpedoes, but kept moving forward, until it reached Philadelphia, but only for a pause, because there was still the quota, and this quota said that if any passenger was seen planting so much as a toe on American soil, this passenger would be deported.
The mother in the picture almost tripped from a plank that almost ended it all for her and her entire family.
She would never forget this and spoke of this frequently and of other instances that could only be called miracles.
The people in this picture to this day are not sure how they got to celebrate Seder night in Philadelphia, or where. Those were confusing times. But either a bus or a train took them somewhere, and there they sat praising freedom from Hitler as their ancestors had praised freedom from Pharaoh.
But America was not yet the Promised Land, and neither was Israel, because as yet there was no Jewish Land reborn. This was still 1944.
That was the year that Hitler was murdering thousands of Jews by the hour.
The Promised Land would have to wait and since America did not want this family, they had to be taken elsewhere.
No one in the picture remembers how this happened, but somehow they got to Canada.
A wonderful country, Canada.
The father in the picture, trained as a rabbi, often joked how Moses had meant to say Canada but it came out Canaan because of his stutter.
So the family made itself at home in Montreal, a big, sprawling, brawling town, historic and modern all at once, so utterly French and British but still somehow Canadian, and there the father in the picture, Noah, found it difficult to get things started those first few years.
Later they got to the United States, which had been the original plan as mapped out with the Allies in cooperation with the Nazis.
That part remains a mystery – and another miracle.
Today, I still look at the picture, the picture of this family, my family, and I study it to imagine what they must have been thinking at the moment that snapshot was taken at a Seder in Montreal, 1944. No one is smiling. They all look exhausted and dazed. The voyage had been treacherous, they had left everything behind, and now they do not know what to expect.
They do not know what to expect because to expect the worst had become normal. That is what the picture says.
Also today, in time for Passover 2016, I received a message from Orit Arfa, a wonderful writer in Israel and a dear friend (you must read this book of hers) alerting me about Michael Chabon, a very successful author born in the U.S.A, a Jewish author who writes upon Jewish themes.
He says he loves Israel BUT. He is among the many American Jews who love Israel BUT.
Born in the U.S.A, he will never know what I know. I am the baby in that picture. I know what it is like not to be born in the U.S.A.
I know what it’s like to be without a country, when America was a distant place and Israel was a distant dream.
There can be nothing to explain to people like Michael Chabon who love Israel BUT.
They arrived, by coincidence, the first night of Passover, 1944. The place was Philadelphia, U.S.A. This too was coincidence.
They came over on a ship named the Serpa Pinto. This was a ship that was blessed as an earlier ship, the St. Louis, had been cursed.
This family were not supposed to be in Philadelphia or anywhere else in America.
The Roosevelt administration did not want them or any other Jews fleeing Hitler, or perhaps FDR did not want too many. A few got in, and stayed.
So there were rules that limited access, known as a quota.
He says he loves Israel BUT. He is among the many American Jews who love Israel BUT.
The Serpa Pinto had left Portugal destined for Canada, but Canada also had a quota, and this quota was firmly enforced by the government.Asked how many Jewish refugees Canada would accept, a spokesman for Prime Minister Mackenzie King declared, “None is too many.”
But this ship, as opposed to the St. Louis, did not turn back to deliver its passengers into the waiting arms of the Gestapo.
The Serpa Pinto had made it this far through the high seas patrolled by German U-Boats that had been firing torpedoes, but kept moving forward, until it reached Philadelphia, but only for a pause, because there was still the quota, and this quota said that if any passenger was seen planting so much as a toe on American soil, this passenger would be deported.
The mother in the picture almost tripped from a plank that almost ended it all for her and her entire family.
She would never forget this and spoke of this frequently and of other instances that could only be called miracles.
The people in this picture to this day are not sure how they got to celebrate Seder night in Philadelphia, or where. Those were confusing times. But either a bus or a train took them somewhere, and there they sat praising freedom from Hitler as their ancestors had praised freedom from Pharaoh.
But America was not yet the Promised Land, and neither was Israel, because as yet there was no Jewish Land reborn. This was still 1944.
That was the year that Hitler was murdering thousands of Jews by the hour.
The Promised Land would have to wait and since America did not want this family, they had to be taken elsewhere.
No one in the picture remembers how this happened, but somehow they got to Canada.
A wonderful country, Canada.
The father in the picture, trained as a rabbi, often joked how Moses had meant to say Canada but it came out Canaan because of his stutter.
So the family made itself at home in Montreal, a big, sprawling, brawling town, historic and modern all at once, so utterly French and British but still somehow Canadian, and there the father in the picture, Noah, found it difficult to get things started those first few years.
Later they got to the United States, which had been the original plan as mapped out with the Allies in cooperation with the Nazis.
That part remains a mystery – and another miracle.
Today, I still look at the picture, the picture of this family, my family, and I study it to imagine what they must have been thinking at the moment that snapshot was taken at a Seder in Montreal, 1944. No one is smiling. They all look exhausted and dazed. The voyage had been treacherous, they had left everything behind, and now they do not know what to expect.
They do not know what to expect because to expect the worst had become normal. That is what the picture says.
Also today, in time for Passover 2016, I received a message from Orit Arfa, a wonderful writer in Israel and a dear friend (you must read this book of hers) alerting me about Michael Chabon, a very successful author born in the U.S.A, a Jewish author who writes upon Jewish themes.
He says he loves Israel BUT. He is among the many American Jews who love Israel BUT.
Born in the U.S.A, he will never know what I know. I am the baby in that picture. I know what it is like not to be born in the U.S.A.
I know what it’s like to be without a country, when America was a distant place and Israel was a distant dream.
There can be nothing to explain to people like Michael Chabon who love Israel BUT.
