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When he was quite old, at the end of the 1920s, my grandfather decided to go to Palestine to see the sacred places. My father didn't want him to go. My grandfather was determined to see the Wailing Wall in his lifetime and he went away by boat. There was no such state as Israel before the war [1], but there was territory under British rule, and the examples of the kibbutzim which had been built by then weren't religious.
As a child I was already sentimentally attached to Zionism without knowing what it really was. I wanted to prevent my grandfather from starting to complain about the lack of religiousness of the youngsters there. As a child I asked him the question, 'It isn't nice that those there are playing football on Saturday, is it?' He looked at me and said, 'When should they play, if they are working on Sunday?' As a religious man, he could accept this, though it was forbidden to play football on Saturday.
I can remember another story he told me. He went to a restaurant [in Palestine] and the waiter pointed out to him that a rabbi was sitting at another table. The rabbi wasn't wearing his hat. My grandfather told me, 'I went to his [the rabbi's] table, introduced myself and asked him how it came that he, a rabbi, was eating without his hat on? The rabbi answered him, 'The good Lord ordered us to walk and to eat with our hat on for people to be able to distinguish a Jew from the others. Here, all are Jews, so we don't need any kind of signs.' I can remember these two stories. My grandfather was by nature, a man of few words.
As a child I was already sentimentally attached to Zionism without knowing what it really was. I wanted to prevent my grandfather from starting to complain about the lack of religiousness of the youngsters there. As a child I asked him the question, 'It isn't nice that those there are playing football on Saturday, is it?' He looked at me and said, 'When should they play, if they are working on Sunday?' As a religious man, he could accept this, though it was forbidden to play football on Saturday.
I can remember another story he told me. He went to a restaurant [in Palestine] and the waiter pointed out to him that a rabbi was sitting at another table. The rabbi wasn't wearing his hat. My grandfather told me, 'I went to his [the rabbi's] table, introduced myself and asked him how it came that he, a rabbi, was eating without his hat on? The rabbi answered him, 'The good Lord ordered us to walk and to eat with our hat on for people to be able to distinguish a Jew from the others. Here, all are Jews, so we don't need any kind of signs.' I can remember these two stories. My grandfather was by nature, a man of few words.
Period
Location
Israel
Interview
Gyorgy Neufeld
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