KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
The first place of rest he found on his long journey was a kibbutz in the newly founded State of Israel. It seems that the adolescent devot- ed all the love that had built up inside him to this kibbutz. Although he had to overcome many problems, the proficiency in Hebrew he had acquired at the Ludvipol Tarbut School provided a solid founda- tion for his integration into his new environment. Everything he had missed during his life among the partisans in the forests, all the suf- fering his frozen limbs had caused him was now repaid to him with joy and friendship. Although Aharon’s narrative and his suffering seem to be similar to what we, the other survivors, particularly the former Tarbut students, went through, his suffering was different and he experienced it as such. The establishment of the State, the transi- tion from the damp and dark forests to sunny Israel was something holy, something truly Messianic, for Arieh. If America became the Golden Land for him, Israel remained the Promised Land to which he is strongly emotionally attached. His is the kind of attachment that Chaim Nachman Bialik described in “ El Hatzipor ” (“To the Bird”). It is also, however, a kind of love that no one else from Ludvipol has managed to give to their children yet. Arieh succeeds in passing this almost Messianic attachment on to his children and grandchildren as their heritage. Having started to read this book because I had to and be- coming more and more enthralled as I read on, I can only wonder how this boy from my former school could muster so much strength and love. I was also wondering whether Arieh, who is younger than I and finished neither the cheder nor the Tarbut School, would appreciate all that in the same way I did. Would Arieh reserve the same place in his life for our school as we, the graduates, did? Arieh Golub has managed to remember the Tarbut School in his American life in the same way as I do in my Viennese life as a professor. Arieh is a miracle to me, as is his book, so yasher koach , Arieh! Professor Dr. Jacob Allerhand
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Graduate, Tarbut School, Ludvipol
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