OR
His shaking hands lit cotton wick soaked in oil by his wife of thirteen years the night before she went into the labour. His wife braided the wick flat allowing it to curl right back into the flame to go back inside the copper jar for self-consumption.
He lit white cotton flat-braided wick, following his people tradition of thousands of years, proclaiming an arrival of the newborn son. He placed the copper oil lamp with a flickering light on the window-sill for all the villagers gathered outside his hut to see.
It was the only window in the hut. He painted walls in white just in time for Pesach and the labour of his firstborn son. A faint fragrance of washed oak floor stood still in the room. His wife washed the floor last night before going into labour.
The room used as a kitchen, with an iron stove in the middle and a wooden bed placed near the stove to keep him and his wife warm during unforgiving freezing Russian winter. There are a table and a chair. Where not in use to cook, and eat, the table was his study place mostly at night. On the table were two items: a small tint jar with ink and yellowish paper he filled with lines of ink, still drying: Shir Hama' lot- a psalm traditionally placed by newborn's crib.
"Psalm 126: Shir Hamaa lot
"שיר המעלות
Both he and his wife were well prepared for the arrival of their firstborn: she washed the wooden floors, braided flat cotton-cord wick and placed the wick inside the copper lamp to let the wick to soak in oil ready to be lit-up, in announcing the birth of their firstborn son. She baked a breaded Halla to celebrate the birth of their firstborn with the villagers. He wrote the Psalm and covered walls of the room with a coat of white lime mined from the nearby Volga river of the Ryazanskaya Region, known for its rich base of raw reserves of limestone and clay.
A naked string of sun ray, a tread of morning glory, shivers in a struggle to get free from shades of darkness, the shades of sorrow, to clad itself instead of in luminous lifetime love.
A bright ray of sunrise insists to penetrate the only window in the room. In an instant, a ray of light cuts through the glass and bounces from the bright white walls, wandering around, humming in a search until it's finally found respite on the surface of the copper lamp.
He wrote the psalm...
she washed the floors...
the copper oil lamp lit their room....
They were well prepared and ready.
He is a village Scholar by night and works the fields by day with the rest of villagers.
A small wooden structure is outside the hut. Similar structures scattered here and there, among village huts, providing basic needs to people who found respite residing in this outskirt village. Their temporary home called Shtetle. Seemingly quaint village situated among lavish green hills and fields of golden wheat, providing an illusion of safety from past Pogroms by hatters towards Jews, spreading like wildfires throughout Russia. The fields of grain provide villagers with Parnasa, livelihood, the trade Jews assumed during the mad days called the Pale of Settlement, translates to Imperial Russian: chertá osédlosti translates to Yiddish: der tkhum-ha-moyshəv. That was the only region of Imperial Russia where the Jews were allowed to reside. Beyond the Pale (derived from the Latin word palus, an area enclosed by a fence or boundary) of Settlement, the Jews were prohibited. This area extended from the east to the western Russian border with the Kingdoms of Prussia and Austria-Hungary.
The fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire in 1832 rolled the Jewish population out of major metropolitan cities. Not only the Jews were stipped off all their possessions, which now become the Russian Empire property, but the Emperor summed the Jewish population throughout Russia to relocate outside the major metropolitan cities, such as Odessa, Moscow, St Petersburg and such. The Emperor replanted them far away from the large vibrant cities with universities into the vast fields of yellow grain, to work the fields of death. By day they flaunt dry ground, grind the wheat, and baked the bread. By night they kept studying the Torah and Talmud by the flicker of the wick.
The child was born during Pale of Settlement in 1892, in a small Village, surrounded by the sea of yellow grain. First sound the newborn heard were soft chants turned hums of the Kadisha (Hevra Kadisha is an organization of Jewish men and women who see to it that the bodies of deceased Jews are prepared for burial) followed by the rasp outcry of village women who gathered outside the hut underneath the window to celebrate the news: a baby boy is born.
...the Mother is dead.
Choking back on tears the Father glanced at lifeless body on the bed and cried out ‘Meir!', naming his newborn son by the name derived from Hebrew ‘Or", translates to ‘Light'.
He couldn't know his newborn son, born in Pale of 1896 during Imperial oppressed Russia, will turn one day into a community leader during the Iron Fist of Communist Regime and their watchful eyes of K.G.B. Bulldogs. He didn't know his fragile newborn son he named Meir- The enlightening one, in Hebrew- who never knew his Mother, will lead one day his People, from dark oppressing Communist Odessa, Ukraine, towards the light, the OR, of Promised Land, their Home of thousand years.
Anna Aizic
contact information:
email paizic@hotmail.com
book https://goo.gl/w68b1e
trailer https://goo.gl/LewCip
art https://www.etsy.com/shop/CirclesOfLife
trailer https://goo.gl/LewCip
article https://goo.gl/i1DMgb
website http://paizic.wixsite.com/anna-aizic
No comments:
Post a Comment