NVN NYE: NEW BEGINNING IN ISRAEL
by Lenore Weiss
Menachem Begin (Mark Reinstein/Getty Images)
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Menachem Begin was Dodo’s first cousin. She and my mother were best friends. Dodo lived on the ground floor. We lived on the other side of the apartment building. Sometimes I babysat her dog Cocoa who pooped on the living room rug before she returned home from vacationing in Israel where she drank coffee with her cousin, the same Menachem Begin. Dodo’s mother was Mrs. Bagoon who lived under the elevated near Southern Boulevard and painted her veins purple with Gentian Violet wearing support stockings that made her feet sweat. Her brother was Menachem’s son whose family came from Russia, and as far as I knew, Israel was a collection basket for the poor and huddled masses all yearning. Sharon, from third-grade, went to Israel with her mother every summer to plant a tree in her father’s memory, and Aunt Clara sent money through her women’s organization. I never remember my mother or father sending money to Israel even though Menachem Begin was Dodo’s first cousin, but they did send me to a Zionist sleep-away camp because that’s where Dodo sent her daughter who really liked it. My father didn’t talk much about Israel, at least not in English, or about the family he’d lost in Hungary, but made it clear he didn't think Zionism was the same winning ticket others hoped for, not the same new beginning for the Jewish people even though Menachem’s last name was spelled like that.
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Lenore Weiss serves as the Associate Creative Nonfiction (CNF) Editor for the Mud Season Review and lives in Oakland, California with Zebra the Brave and Granola the Shy. Her environmental novel Pulp into Paper is forthcoming from Atmosphere Press as is a new poetry collection, Video Game Pointers from WordTech Communications.