By Yakov Nayerman
SAN DIEGO — We were sitting not long ago with friends in a little Chinese restaurant, talking over the latest news. Someone mentioned other attacks on religious Jews—in Europe and in New York. My wife immediately tensed: her son and grandsons are Chabadniks, they always wear visible signs—tzitzit fringes peeking out from under their clothes, yarmulkes on the boys’ heads, and for her son, a black hat. She is terribly afraid for them.
The conversation quietly shifted to a question: is it worth keeping these outward distinctions at all, and for what purpose risk it? We have a large mezuzah on the front door, so if anti-Jewish pogroms ever begin, our house would be one of the first targets. What and to whom are we proving by displaying our Jewishness? Is not life itself the highest value? And if so, aren’t any steps justified that improve the chances of preserving it?
When my turn came to speak, I said:
— Each person decides this question for himself. I have no words, nor can I, to condemn those who for the safety of their children or for survival conceal their Jewishness. After all, we don’t condemn the Marranos in medieval Spain, or the prisoners of the Nazi camps who passed themselves off as Muslims, who also circumcised their boys. But I remember well how I answered this same question to my grandfather more than half a century ago. In many ways I have changed since then, but in this I still fully agree with my 20-year-old self.
— Tell us more, — my friends asked.
— There’s a famous story by the Soviet writer Isaac Babel, Karl-Yankel, published in 1931. It tells of a trial of a mohel (the man who performs circumcisions according to Jewish law) who carried out a brit milah without the father’s consent. The irony is that almost the same thing happened to me.
I am not religious. I go to synagogue only twice a year—on Passover and Yom Kippur. And not so much to pray (alas, I was never taught), but rather to immerse myself in the music of thousand-year-old traditions, familiar from childhood. My parents, who grew up in the atheist USSR, were also far from religion. But my maternal grandfather was deeply observant and followed everything he could—which in Soviet Moscow was nearly impossible.
So, my grandparents never ate sausage, because there was no kosher meat in Moscow. Before each Friday, my grandmother would go to the Ptichiy Rynok, Moscow’s famous pet market, for live chickens. I loved going with her: the place was full of all sorts of creatures—fish in aquariums, dogs, cats, turtles, piglets, and, of course, chickens. Then my grandfather Shmuel, a certified shochet, would slaughter a chicken according to halacha, and my grandmother made from it an incredible soup. They even made their own kosher wine from raisins.
I was born… not at the best time to be born a Jew, at the end of 1952, during the infamous “Doctors’ Plot”—Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaign. Had Stalin not died in March 1953, the Jews, like the Crimean Tatars before them, would have been deported to the Far East; everything for that was already prepared.
My father worked at the ZiS automobile factory, where this whole wave of anti-Semitic hysteria began. Director Likhachyov was fired for “improper staffing,” and those suspected of sympathies with Zionism were arrested right at their workplaces. Every day, when my father left for the factory in the morning, he and my mother were unsure he would return home. Any connection to Judaism could lead to arrest and prison. Circumcision, in particular. But for my grandfathers, a boy not circumcised was as though not yet born as a Jew.
Circumcision is usually done on the eighth day. But since my father, given the situation, was categorically against it, they waited until he went away on a business trip (I was already eight months old) and performed the ritual in his absence.
When my father returned, he was horrified and furious. He was obligated to report to the KGB, which would have meant destroying my grandfather. By staying silent, he was, in a sense, complicit, and risked his own life. My grandfather offered to turn himself in, but my father refused: he said no one would believe he hadn’t known. Luckily, by then Stalin had died, and there was hope of some relaxation. In the end, we were spared. My parents almost divorced because of that. Later it was gradually forgotten. But the relationship between my father and his in-laws never healed—he could never forgive them this “betrayal.”
Until the age of 12 or 13, I lived in constant fear of being “exposed”: in swimming pools I avoided communal showers, and any similar situations.
Twenty years later, in 1972, my grandparents emigrated to Israel. The parting at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport was torment. We were sure we would never see each other again.
In the last hour before their departure, my grandfather and I went off alone.
— I have a question for you, — I said.
— I have one for you too. You start.
— Zeidele (grandfather, in Yiddish), we will probably never see each other again. Everyone here is weeping, sobbing. And only you don’t look sad, but even happy. Why?
— Yankele, perhaps it is hard for you to understand. For a thousand years, for hundreds of generations, year after year we repeated: “Next year in Jerusalem.” Repeated it the way Christians speak of the Second Coming. It had become a phrase in which few still believed. And yet I don’t know for what merit, but in my lifetime a miracle happened: from the ashes the state of Israel was reborn. And I, the first one from all those generations, was granted the fortune to fulfill that ancient covenant. How could I not rejoice?
And you? I am sure you will leave here. No matter where—to Israel, to America, to Australia—but somewhere you will be free, where you won’t have to hide your belonging to our people.
— And now, Yankele, my question. The decision, behind your father’s back, to circumcise you was the hardest of my life. I knew the risk. And you know, in those moments I thought of Abraham, ready to sacrifice his son Isaac. All these years I wanted to ask you this question, which I will ask now, before we part, probably forever. Tell me honestly: do you regret that we did it?
I thought a few minutes and answered:
— Once, at first, I hated this physical uniqueness of mine. But gradually I began to feel pride. In our family I became a symbol of resistance, a living bearer of a secret. This story gave me a special sense of Jewish identity and a deep connection, especially with you. It allowed me to become who I am today. A tattoo can be removed, documents can be bought, but this—this is forever part of me. It shaped me as I am. It shaped the best qualities I have. Without it I would have been someone else. Better or worse, I don’t know. But someone else, different, lacking my identity.
We embraced. He left, and I never saw him again. Seventeen years later he passed away—just a few months before we left the Soviet Union. But many years later, walking the streets of Toledo, Izmir, or Jaffa and listening to stories of Jewish suffering and resistance, I felt not just a bystander but directly connected to our history.
We were silent for several minutes. And then one of my friends said:
— You should write it down. In order for our children and grandchildren to truly value the freedoms they are given here from birth, we must keep telling them these stories.
Epilogue
The circumcision of my first grandson Michael, named after my father, took place in Los Angeles, at the height of the pandemic, without the traditional celebration and guests. At a certain point his father, my son-in-law, a Catholic by faith, said that one of the reasons that moved him to choose a Jewish circumcision for his son was the story of my own circumcision.
And once again I thanked fate that we had managed to leave back then. And that we no longer have to hide or sneak about in secret to continue our millennia-old traditions.
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Yakov Nayerman is a freelance writer based in San Diego.