Tag #155368 - Interview #103735 (Nikolay Schwartz Biography)

In 1987 I visited my sister in Israel for the first time. Of course, I liked Israel very much, but I didn’t consider staying there. I felt out of place, missed my home and friends and I wouldn’t manage to learn Ivrit. I can still remember a little Hebrew that we studied in cheder, the language of the torah, but it’s hard for me to understand contemporary Ivrit spoken in Israel. I haven’t visited my sister again: I didn’t get along with her husband. We didn’t like each other, and I didn’t want to cause conflicts between Yelizaveta and her husband. There was an incident in Israel that strained our relationships. My sister and her husband observed Jewish traditions and followed kashrut. Chaim Klein always had his head covered. As for me, I didn’t think it was necessary and didn’t have a kippah or a hat. Once Chaim and I took a bus. I was sitting on a seat in the middle part and he was near the driver. A rabbi came into the bus. He happened to be Chaim’s acquaintance from New York. They used to go to the synagogue together and discuss the Torah. In Israel they also met regularly to read and discuss what they had read. The rabbi saw Chaim and nodded to him, and Chaim yelled at me from where he was sitting: ‘Put on a kippah immediately!’ I didn’t have a kippah and felt very ill at ease. Even the rabbi felt uncomfortable. He turned his head away pretending that he didn’t hear. When we got off the bus, Chaim began to shout at me reproaching me for not observing Jewish traditions. I objected that not everybody in Israel wore a kippah and that if he thought it necessary he should have warned me about it. This made our relationships worse than ever and I hurried to find an excuse for going back home. I saw Yelizaveta for the last time in July 1996, when she visited Uzhgorod. In October 1996 my sister died. 3 years later her husband died too.