You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In the beginning I thought God lived behind the door at 35 Rashi Street in Tel Aviv, where Savta Bobbe lived.
Savta is grandmother in Hebrew, and Bobbe is grandmother in Yiddish. Savta Bobbe was my great-grandmother, so my name for her was not altogether inaccurate. For as long as I can remember, I was taller than she was. Her size turned out to be quite convenient, as she shared the tiniest two-room apartment with her daughter, my great-aunt Mera, and Mera's husband, Binyamin.
The two-hour drive from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv took plenty of preparation and seemed like a great voyage that would last forever. We would make the journey in summer, and when we arrived, exhausted and thirsty, Savta Bobbe would immediately serve us a hot cup of tea, for she firmly believed that this is the only way “to chase away the heat.” In Savta Bobbe's household nobody cared about table manners. Binyamin used to drink his soup while producing distinguished sound effects, but for some unknown reason he was allowed such imperfection, even by my father.
Binyamin owned a barbershop, and I was thrilled when I could spend the day there, looking at pictures of beautiful hairdos in foreign magazines, eavesdropping on the conversation, smelling all those weird hair lotions, and listening to Binyamin whistle whole concertos. He always wanted to treat me and would get frustrated by my refusal. “How can anyone refuse food?” he would wonder, nodding his head and wrinkling his brow in bewilderment. “And especially sweets …”
On the way home from the shop at the end of the day, Binyamin and I would stop to buy a block of ice. We would carry the dripping block home, losing half of it to the heat, while laughing our hearts out at his concentration camp jokes. Once I asked my mother if she and Dad had ever been to such a camp, and she told me they hadn't. “How come?” I asked. “Weren't you good enough to be sent there?”
Savta Bobbe thought that neither my mother nor I could ever do any wrong.
I doubt whether she