23/4/97

Never say die

In some ways, Max is a typical new immigrant: he had to undergo preparation, paperwork, upheaval, packing and unpacking, excitement and anxiety. Like all new Israelis, Max came here with ambitious optimism.
    But there was something a bit out of the ordinary when Max presented himself to the Absorption Ministry official at the airport:
    “Name?”
    “Max Sobel.”
    “Age?”
    “Ninety-six.”
    And then Max turned on his trademark charm, and the official, belying her soulless profession, saw him off with a kiss.
    Max is the sort of fellow who can melt the crust off the most miserable clerk. He leaves 'em grinning wherever he's been. His good humor rolls forth as if he has nothing to worry about. Death wouldn't even rank among his top 10 concerns.
    “I didn't come here to die, you know. I came here to live.”
    He'd wanted to settle here since his first visit -- in 1921. He left his shtetl
in Ukraine, where he'd become more than a little fed up with the regularity of pogroms inflicted on the 35 Jewish families by their 80,000 neighbors. The last straw was when his cousin, about to be married, was gang-raped and flung down a well. There had to be a better place for a Jew to be a Jew.
    Palestine held out that promise, but in 1921, they weren't looking for nice, they wanted tough.
    “They needed men for road-building, they told me. But I had this curvature of the spine, so they said go to the United States, maybe they can straighten you out. Then, you can come back.”
    He settled in Burlington, Vermont, and found work with a caring Jewish family in their department store (“I made a living, but I didn't set the world on fire”).
    In all that time, for 75 years, he dreamed of living in Eretz Yisrael. So why didn't he? The usual reasons. His wife didn't want to live here, he was settled in his job, they'd bought a modest home. But with the years came widowhood and retirement, and the chance he waited for.
    Max has had a lot to remember in his nearly 97 years, so he can be forgiven for forgetting a few details, such as where he now lives (if he should ask, it's Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood). But the ol' noggin still works fine. He can still recall back as far as oh-six, when he entered the renowned Grodna Yeshiva.
    He remembers “meeting” Trotsky -- well, almost; “he was only a couple of miles away,” he chuckles. And he recalls visiting Herzl's grave -- in Vienna.
    He rambles a bit, repeats himself sometimes, but ask him a question, and he's off, jauntily regaling his much, much younger audience with colorful recollections of the Russian Revolution, World War I, and “when Germany was the best place for the Jews.”
    His hearing isn't so good, he's bent and his legs need a little shake to get working, but once he gets himself wound up, he's full o' beans. In the airport on the way here, he hooked up with a traveling Mexican band and entertained waiting passengers with a modest Fred Astaire imitation.
    He's almost 97, for goodness sake!
Until a few weeks before he made aliya, Max was still driving. In fact, he had just bought a new car two months before he left Burlington.
Now that he's in Israel, you don't suppose he's going to just sit around and wait for the end to come? Nah. “I plan to join the army,” he says. “I want to fight the terrorists.”
I suspect he may be kidding.
His expectations are a tad more sedentary than that: he'll be walking quite a bit, he's determined to learn Hebrew and most of all, he wants to learn Torah and Gemara. He says he has “come in search of Isaiah.” And if he picks up where he left off in Burlington, he'll be wooing the ladies.
He'd like to do some touring. He allows that the country has changed in 75 years, but his most cherished destination, “the Koysel [Kotel],” promises to be unchanged, to the brick. The biggest single difference between Jerusalem then and now? He wrinkles his nose. “Then, it was full of shmootz [dirt].”
   Beit Shemesh is another old haunt he wants to visit. That's where he was domiciled during his eight-month stay in 1921. “Is Beit Shemesh still there? I'd like to see it someday.”
There is a beautiful lightness to his lilting, Yiddish-tinged expression. His skin is rippled but smooth, his lively blue eyes evince a clever, wise and gentle soul. He has a sweet habit of taking your