Selected text
The Zionist organizations had already been created by that time. Only very few were members of Hashomer Hatzair [15], there was also Betar [16]; only boys were accepted in it. My mother was a member of the women’s organization WIZO [17]. There was another charity: its members gathered and visited ill people. Its name was Bikur Cholim [18]. Very often they helped poor girls by preparing their dowry or buying a sewing machine so that the girl could prepare the dowry herself. That was the most precious gift, to buy a poor girl a sewing machine; she could prepare her dowry and that also gave her the chance to practice a craft. There’s a famous sentence, ‘You shouldn’t go to bed with a light heart if you are aware that a brother of yours is going to bed hungry.’ This was valid for the Jewish community and is still valid today.
After finishing the fourth grade I was accepted in Maccabi [19]. All the children in it were divided into groups according to their age: Maccabi bands. Our mothers would sew the uniforms for us: white shirts with pleated skirts and sailor’s hats. Maccabi was a Zionist, sports organization, which means that it encouraged the desire to found a Jewish state and at the same time our slogan was: sound mind in a sound body. The members of Maccabi were always in a dispute with the boys from Betar who believed that the Jewish homeland should be won by fight and war whereas we raised money because we believed the right thing to do was to buy the Palestine lands. We had some blue money-boxes [20], which were used for collecting the donations for that purpose. Every week we went from shop to shop, from house to house, to raise funds.
Magazines issued at the time, like Ashofar, for example, contributed to the raising of those Zionist spirits. There were a lot of songs and books devoted to that topic. I recall a title, ‘We’re Building Erez Israel’ – there was such a leaflet, yes. I also remember a slogan from that time, ‘We have to resurrect the biblical language – the Hebrew language, and we have to!’ And there was a meeting of the young people where we had to talk only in Hebrew. We had a symbolic hoop that was given to a person who switched on to some other language besides Hebrew. The person who had the hoop on Friday evening had to pay two levs. That was a stimulus to study and revive that language. Even nowadays I believe that was a triumph of the Jewish state: to turn a biblical, dead language into living speech and modern language. Because the Jews understood that having their own language meant having a state, a nation.
My brother was a member of Maccabi, too. We talked a lot with him there, not so much at home but in the organization. I can say he was extremely active. He was very good at sports and always got awards for that. And there we had something common to talk about; otherwise we didn’t communicate so much with each other. He was four years younger than me and was a boy and I was already a grown-up girl. He was a little jealous when I went out with boys. He never liked the boys I went out with. My parents didn’t like those boys either. They somewhat overestimated me.
At Maccabi we used to put on stage literature trials. For example, for the novel ‘Martin Eden,’ a novel by Jack London. The protagonist commits suicide at the end of the novel. We appointed a judge, a prosecutor and a defending lawyer. There was an audience. And the prosecutor started settling the case by asking, ‘Is it power or weakness to commit suicide?’ The defender started defending. The audience expressed their opinions. And at the end the judge returned a verdict of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty.’
We staged plays. For example, the Ukrainian play, I can’t remember the author, ‘It’s hard to be a Jew.’ [The author of the play ‘Shver tsu zayn a yid’ (Hard to be a Jew, 1914) was Sholem Aleichem.] I was an old woman. Can you imagine me, a midget of a girl, playing an old woman? We were somewhere on the square, I entered and said, ‘Listen, people – defeat.’ And the audience started laughing instead of crying. I was a girl wearing the clothes of an old woman and was shouting. I wasn’t much of an actress.
We performed Bulgarian and Jewish characters.
After finishing the fourth grade I was accepted in Maccabi [19]. All the children in it were divided into groups according to their age: Maccabi bands. Our mothers would sew the uniforms for us: white shirts with pleated skirts and sailor’s hats. Maccabi was a Zionist, sports organization, which means that it encouraged the desire to found a Jewish state and at the same time our slogan was: sound mind in a sound body. The members of Maccabi were always in a dispute with the boys from Betar who believed that the Jewish homeland should be won by fight and war whereas we raised money because we believed the right thing to do was to buy the Palestine lands. We had some blue money-boxes [20], which were used for collecting the donations for that purpose. Every week we went from shop to shop, from house to house, to raise funds.
Magazines issued at the time, like Ashofar, for example, contributed to the raising of those Zionist spirits. There were a lot of songs and books devoted to that topic. I recall a title, ‘We’re Building Erez Israel’ – there was such a leaflet, yes. I also remember a slogan from that time, ‘We have to resurrect the biblical language – the Hebrew language, and we have to!’ And there was a meeting of the young people where we had to talk only in Hebrew. We had a symbolic hoop that was given to a person who switched on to some other language besides Hebrew. The person who had the hoop on Friday evening had to pay two levs. That was a stimulus to study and revive that language. Even nowadays I believe that was a triumph of the Jewish state: to turn a biblical, dead language into living speech and modern language. Because the Jews understood that having their own language meant having a state, a nation.
My brother was a member of Maccabi, too. We talked a lot with him there, not so much at home but in the organization. I can say he was extremely active. He was very good at sports and always got awards for that. And there we had something common to talk about; otherwise we didn’t communicate so much with each other. He was four years younger than me and was a boy and I was already a grown-up girl. He was a little jealous when I went out with boys. He never liked the boys I went out with. My parents didn’t like those boys either. They somewhat overestimated me.
At Maccabi we used to put on stage literature trials. For example, for the novel ‘Martin Eden,’ a novel by Jack London. The protagonist commits suicide at the end of the novel. We appointed a judge, a prosecutor and a defending lawyer. There was an audience. And the prosecutor started settling the case by asking, ‘Is it power or weakness to commit suicide?’ The defender started defending. The audience expressed their opinions. And at the end the judge returned a verdict of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty.’
We staged plays. For example, the Ukrainian play, I can’t remember the author, ‘It’s hard to be a Jew.’ [The author of the play ‘Shver tsu zayn a yid’ (Hard to be a Jew, 1914) was Sholem Aleichem.] I was an old woman. Can you imagine me, a midget of a girl, playing an old woman? We were somewhere on the square, I entered and said, ‘Listen, people – defeat.’ And the audience started laughing instead of crying. I was a girl wearing the clothes of an old woman and was shouting. I wasn’t much of an actress.
We performed Bulgarian and Jewish characters.
Period
Location
Pazardzhik
Bulgaria
Interview
Sofi Eshua Danon-Moshe