A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [157]
“Hello, Mr. Heustein. How are you?”
“Oiy,” he said. “It's slow, this kosher business.”
‘That's because you charge too much. The Poles can't afford it.”
“No. The Poles come. If it wasn't for the Poles, we would have been out of business two years ago. But the Jews—”
THE MARKET FOR KOSHER PRODUCTS was only one of the signs that Jewishness, along with anti-Semitism, had become fashionable in post-Communist Poland. Jewish studies became one of the fastest growing fields in Polish universities, and Jewish books grew in popularity. Every sidewalk bookstand offered Polish translations of Isaac Bashevis Singer's novels. Poles with only one possibly Jewish grandfather were saying they were really Jewish. But most Jews suspected that this philo-Semitism, or Jew-loving, was simply the newest trend in anti-Semitism. It was also something that was left over from the old Solidarity days. The anti-Zionist campaign of 1968 had fixed in people's minds the idea that sympathy for Jews was an anti-Communist act. A young man from Cracow who had never before met a Jew—in itself something that would have been unimaginable in Poland even one generation earlier—took the opportunity to apologize on behalf of Poland to the first one he met for the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968, which he termed “Poland's greatest disgrace.” He apparently knew of no earlier disgraces for which Poland should apologize to Jews. It was the Communists who had destroyed Polish Jewry, he believed.
At the same time, to walk around Poland in Hasidic garb is an act of physical courage. Yoskowitz was assaulted more than once by skinheads punching him in the face, shouting “Zyd.” The few religious Jews left in Poland do not even go outside with a yar-mulke on—that is only for the house or synagogue. Mezuzahs are placed inside, not outside doorways. A New York rabbi, not understanding this world, walked into a small-town store in southern Poland in search of a soft drink. The local peasants, who were already visibly drunk though it was still morning, spied his small knit yarmulke. One of them said, “You're a Jew, aren't you?”
“Yes,” the rabbi replied.
“Give me your money.”
“I'm not going to give you my money.”
“You owe me your money.”
In the back a few were angrily chanting, “Zyd, Zyd, Zyd.” But the rabbi was able to leave with no more than a little shoving.
Yoskowitz, however, was not only assaulted, he was also frequently assailed by young Poles who wanted him to convert them to Judaism. He refused. He did not want Christians. He wanted to find the hidden Jews, people like Barbara Gruberska who had been placed in non-Jewish homes by Jewish parents who did not survive. Nobody could be certain how many now-middle-aged people like her there were, who had not yet discovered the truth.
A YEAR AFTER Mateusz's bar mitzvah, Moishe Shapiro prepared a second bar mitzvah for Barbara Gruberska's son, Andrzei. Barbara had wanted very much to give her son and daughter the Jewish identity out of which she had been cheated. Her husband, a non-Jew whose family had been socialists since the nineteenth century, despised the Catholic Church but had no ill will toward Judaism.
Andrzei would have been perfectly suited to continue the cover-up in which Barbara had been raised. Tall and blond, with pale blue eyes, his appearance could be described as that of “a typical Pole,” which is what he was until his mother took him to Moishe Shapiro. Andrzei approached this Jewishness with considerable ambivalence. He had never needed any identity other than being Polish. What initially made a difference for him was the charm of this small elderly man with his permanent hat and his Yiddish-accented Polish. Andrzei, always a good student, had never had a teacher he enjoyed so much. The bar mitzvah was a great moment in his family's life. His non-Jewish father started talking about