My Secret Memory

By Israel Tsvaygenbaum

In My Secret Memory, artist Israel Tsvaygenbaum takes the reader on a journey through everyday life that inspires paintings. From the nostalgia of his childhood to the heartache of first love, Israel's work explores different personal experiences as a way to showcase the influence of life on art.

Every moment, every pe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Israel Tsvaygenbaum
• Release date: Jul 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088207437

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© 2023 by Israel Tsvaygenbaum

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022917927

Preface

My memoir I dedicate to my family, particularly to my children and grandchildren. I wanted them to know my thoughts behind my paintings, how I came to ideas that I depicted in my artwork. I wanted them to know that everything in this world is interconnected. Nothing in our life goes unnoticed; sometimes, a simple thing for me became a seed of a new composition—a process that sometimes took time to turn into a painting. This required my patience, passion for the conceived idea, and dedication to work—to believe in what I was doing. To believe in myself, even when everyone doubted me, was the biggest test in life.

I wanted my memoir to give my children a better understanding of my childhood, to give them an opportunity to learn more about their grandparents. It is important for future generations to know how the lives of their ancestors evolved. They will better understand the family history, how they got to where they are now in life, and how to prepare their own children for the future. I want to give them all knowledge on how to survive in this life.

In my memoir I changed names of the people, even some of them no longer living. I think this way it will be fairer to the good memories of the people who were in my life. I am very grateful to fate for this. Each of them left a unique mark on my life. Many of them gave me schooling about life, and today I can’t imagine how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t met these people. I am grateful that they shared their knowledge with me. The memory of these people prompted me to create some of my paintings. They were sources of my inspiration.

In this book are included some images of my paintings that reflect the life of people I describe in this memoir. These images will help you to understand my art.

This memoir does not include all my memories of so many wonderful people that I have met in the journey of my life. Fortunately, there were many good people; many of them deserve a separate story. Maybe next time.

I hope you enjoy the book with some of my artwork.

Please be aware that this book includes frank descriptions of violence and sexual encounters involving a child, and this material may be disturbing to some readers.

The Shochet with Rooster

I grew up in the city of Derbent, in the Soviet Union. I am a product of two Jewish cultures, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, which, to some extent, reflects the time that I lived there.

My father was European Jewish (Ashkenazi), and my mother was of Mountain Jewish (Sephardi) descent. Mountain Jews are Jews who lived on the eastern and northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains. They are the descendants of Persian Jews from Iran. This intermingling was between two different cultures that are branches of one religion. The Jewish religion played a big part in my life and later profoundly affected my art. My parents kept Shabbat and celebrated all religious holidays.

My father never held any high position in our city. He and my mother spent many years working in the Derbent cannery. My father, due to his erudition and religious education, served as a spiritual bridge between the European and Mountain Jews. Both the well-to-do and the poor people in both communities respected him. Young people and old turned to him for advice. The Mountain Jews repeatedly asked him to become their rabbi, but he would always turn them down. My father would have had no problem accepting the role had it been only as spiritual leader, but the rabbi in Derbent also served as the shochet (butcher), and my father was too squeamish to perform that task.

Most of the Ashkenazi Jews living in Derbent after World War II were refugees who had lost loved ones in the concentration camps or ghettos. Uprooted by the war, they saw my father and his religious knowledge as a link to their past. The spiritual leadership he brought them gave them a sense of connection to who they were and who they had been. This was especially true on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), when my father led a prayer service for the Ashkenazi Jews in a small room of the Derbent synagogue. On this day, it is traditional to read the yizkor, a memorial prayer for loved ones who have died. When my father read it, both he and the rest of the community would sob, remembering all those murdered in cities, ghettos, and concentration camps during the war. His role on the Day of Atonement was invaluable to the community.

I often wondered why Ashkenazi Jews on Yom Kippur never prayed alongside the Mountain Jews during the yizkor prayer. They always asked my father to read the prayer in a separate room. Later, as an adult, I realized that Ashkenazi Jews, including my father, wanted to pray and cry in the languages spoken by their mothers and fathers. Reading with my father in their familiar dialect of Ashkenazi Hebrew, rather than the Sephardi Hebrew that the Mountain Jews used, was for them a kind of prayerful meditation and nostalgia. They received comfort through the Yiddish language.

This language difference is one reason for the existence of two communities, despite their shared religion. In Derbent, Ashkenazi Jews lived sometimes in a common housing courtyard with Mountain Jews, but the differences of language and culture created some conflict and misunderstandings. My father was the last Ashkenazi in Derbent who regularly went to synagogue all year long.

On the eve of Yom Kippur, my father held a Jewish ritual, kapparot. My father would recite the prayer as he swung a live chicken over our heads three times so that our sins would be symbolically passed to the bird. He swung a rooster above himself, my brother, and me and a hen over my mother and grandmother. When my father swung the bird above our heads, they usually squawked loudly, especially the roosters. I was always afraid that they would peck me, but, fortunately, it never happened; my father kept them far enough away from my head.

Sometimes our Mountain Jewish neighbors asked my father to perform the kapparot over them too. They would bring my father live roosters and money to donate to the needy. Neighbors who did not have roosters brought eggs. Sometimes, neighbors asked my father to perform the ritual over clothing belonging to their children and husbands.

Whenever the Jewish ritual kapparot comes to mind, my thoughts always return to my father and to all the spiritual elements that I inherited from him. Later, as a grown man, in tribute to the ritual, I started to paint Kapparot.

Unfortunately, so far, the picture is unfinished. My youngest daughter and my friend Les posed for this picture with his rooster. I am still not satisfied with the development of the work. However, one day, I hope to complete this picture.

After the completion of the ritual, my older brother and I would carry the rooster to the synagogue, to a butcher. When I was young, I usually went with my brother, but when he went to the city of Makhachkala to continue studying, going to the butcher was just my responsibility. The first time I independently carried chickens to the butcher was when I was eight years old. It was about a twenty-five-to-thirty-minute walk from my house to the Derbent synagogue on the street Tagi-Zade, 99.

When I came to the synagogue, the butcher took the roosters out of my hands. After reading the prayer in Hebrew, he killed them with a sharp knife to make them kosher. After a few minutes, as the blood flowed from my roosters, the butcher took them from hooks over a large sink and put them back in my bag. The butcher spoke with me for a few minutes about my parents, then said goodbye to me and went to serve other people. I then walked home with the kosher chickens. In 1997, based on my vivid impressions of these episodes, I painted The Shochet with Rooster.

Soon after I came back home from the synagogue, my grandmother asked me to take one of the slaughtered roosters to a poor neighbor. Her name was Shegeri. My grandmother told me to give the donation to her personally. She lived in the house of her brother, two streets behind ours along the ramparts. It was a Mountain Jewish family. When I came to this house, I began to knock on the cherry-colored wooden gate, but no one opened it. Suddenly, I heard a woman’s voice in the Mountain Jewish language: Open the gate.

After a hard push, I opened the gate. For the first time, I saw my neighbor Shegeri. Both of her legs were paralyzed. When I went into the yard, she was preparing newly shorn wool for hand spinning. Shegeri was a grown woman, about sixty years old. It was hard not to notice her kind and beautiful eyes. Her face showed few of the deep wrinkles of old age. She lived in a courtyard in an adobe hut, which was built right next to the gate, just in front of the communal toilet. Her hut, approximately four by six feet long, reminded me of a doghouse. Its clay floor was damp. She had neither doors nor windows. An old, hole-filled piece of baggy canvas served as the door. For lighting, she used a kerosene lamp. She cooked on a kerosene stove. Like most Caucasian women of the time, she wore a kerchief on her head. Hers was black, threadbare, and discolored from years of wear. She sat on a small pillow with piles of old junk scattered around her. They were mostly old rags, which she huddled under on cold days. Despite the conditions in which she lived, I never saw her express anger because of her life.

I handed her the gift from my grandmother, a slaughtered rooster for Yom Kippur. Shegeri was very polite and grateful for it. On leaving, I said goodbye to her and closed the gate behind me. Suddenly, I burst into tears. My neighbor noticed me crying and asked me why. I did not say anything to her and ran away to home as fast as I could, still crying.

My mother was in shock and bewildered by my weeping. I told her about Shegeri’s living conditions, about her miserable existence in an adobe hut that had been built for her right next to the gate. My mother embraced me and wiped the tears on my face. She apologized about my grandmother’s having sent me to Shegeri and sympathized with me for the painful poverty I had seen. For me, then eight years old, Shegeri’s living conditions revealed a reality I had never known existed. This was the first time I witnessed such human misery. Seeing Shegeri was a life lesson for me; it gave me a perpetual fear of poverty. This feeling has never left me.

Later, at the request of my grandmother or my mother, I went many times to Shegeri. I loved to bring her treats. When I came to her, I always felt the importance of helping the poor. I always left her with good feelings. Although still a child, I understood that helping someone in need brings no less joy and satisfaction than receiving help from other people. The more we give, the more we receive.

Shegeri’s brother had five children, but only the youngest niece, Bojis, was very close to her. No one else paid attention to her. For the rest of the family, Shegeri just did not exist.

When Shegeri died, my grandmother bathed her body according to Jewish tradition. My grandmother often washed the dead; she did this for many in the community. She believed that it was particularly noble to wash the body of the tormented life of the neighbor. It was hard to realize that I would never again see Shegeri, that lovely woman who was so generous with her blessings.

My life and the lives of my children are closely intertwined with both secular modern life and religion. The Jewish religion helped me keep my cultural identity and uniqueness and not get lost in a big bouquet of different ethnicities. The Jewish religion helped us to preserve the beauty of our traditions that we inherited more than three thousand years ago.

I always wanted to pass the baton that I got from my parents to my children in a relay race of new generations. I was always wary not to drop my baton in my life’s race. I am happy to realize that I made it. My children are holding tight to their religion’s value. I am sure they will pass their baton to the next generation. The Judaism in my family will survive and will always have an important place, as it did many generations ago.

Neighbors

I lived in Derbent behind the northern fortress gate of Dash-Kapa. My immediate neighbors were mostly Mountain Jews. I played and grew up with them. My friends on the street were Munosh, Sasha, Yahushua, Haim, and Isay. In elementary school, even though my father helped me to do my homework every night, I didn’t like to study, and I always thought about playing outside with friends. Most of the time before school started, we played cards, soccer, hockey, or tag. Sometimes the neighbor girls, Hivit, Rya, Sarah, and Zina, played hopscotch or jump rope. I loved the summer most of all, when we spent whole days on the beach. We forgot about lunch and about everything else in our lives. The Caspian Sea was a happy, fun place for us. We spent hours swimming, diving, emerging, and tangling with one another in the water. We were happy.

Along with the fun times with my friends on the street, we sometimes quarreled and fought with one another, as all children do.

I had a few fights with my neighborhood friends. The most memorable quarrel was with my friend Munosh, who lived two houses down from ours. I was eleven years old. Munosh and I were pouring water on ourselves from the tap in our courtyard on a hot July day.

We were both stripped to the waist, soaked in water, and enjoying our fun time. Suddenly, Munosh ran home and soon returned with two long stainless-steel barbecue skewers. He handed over a skewer and said excitedly, Let’s fence.

Unsuspecting, I settled into my best fencing stance.

After a few seconds of enthusiastic fencing, Munosh’s skewer touched his own naked torso. He screamed in pain. He pressed a hand to his side, where a burn mark from the skewer was forming.

My older brother ran to Munosh to see what had happened. The burn on his body told us the truth of it: Munosh had brought a red-hot skewer to hit me with, but fate had decreed he would be hit instead.

Munosh went home in tears, taking both his skewers with him.

A few hours later, Munosh and his screaming mother came to our house to quarrel with my parents about his burned skin. She showed them Munosh’s burned skin, which was covered in large blisters. I felt guilty even though I wasn’t to blame for it.

Munosh’s parents did not talk to us for a whole year. But Munosh and I played together again after just three months.