Worthy fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages blogger,
I am a man who has already lived half my years and I can say that I have never had any peace.
I was born in Russia on the Black Sea near Georgia. My parents were poor and when I was quite young I went to Moscow to study at the Kol Ya’akov yeshiva. In 1963, the yeshiva sent me home to my parents because it was closing. I was thirteen. In time I married a girl who was as lonely as I, and we were happy, even though I made a meager living. We had five children by then and little money coming in. I became a janitor, and for the work I was given two dark little rooms to live in where the sun was ashamed to shine.
When things changed in 1990, it was decided that my wife and I should go to Germany with our sons. We went through a lot until we finally saw the “Golden Land,” and here during the first years I suffered a great deal. I worked at many jobs and started to work at a fellow immigrant’s shop. I had a lot to put up with in the shop from the boss, the foreman and even certain workers. But no matter how hard I worked, I always used my free time to continue learning Torah.
One day, when I went out to look for work, I ran into a friend with whom I had studied years ago in Moscow. I was thin as a rail, but he was well fed, had a big belly and was well dressed with a bright-colored t-shirt. I asked him what he does for a living, but he didn’t answer, only invited me to his home. There, over dinner, he told me that if I wanted to I could be as well off as he. In short, he told me he was a missionary and he made Kohle. I was in a tight spot and I let him talk me into it. I also became a traitor to my people and devoted myself to preaching Christian doctrine to other Russian Jews. How much I now regret that I agreed to it! I know that such a degraded person does not deserve sympathy and cannot be forgiven.
When my wife, who became religious in Germany, found out that I had become a missionary, she didn’t want to know me any longer. I was sent out of our apartment and I didn’t hear from my wife and children. From aggravation I got sick, became paralyzed and lay in the hospital for a time. Lying there, lonely and sick, I had enough time to think about my “occupation,” about the gang of missionaries and about the fact that I had paid dearly for the stupid step that I now regretted.
I have left the hospital and the doctor says I will recover fully so I decided to go back to work in the shop again. I cannot demand sympathy from my wife, because I do not deserve it, but I hope you will publish my email. Maybe my wife will read it and perhaps at least let me know where she is and how my children are, because I would like to help them out. I also hope that my letter will serve as a warning to others to beware of making the terrible mistake I made.
With respect,
Unhappy
Dear Unhappy:
This is the reward for treachery, for preaching something one does not himself believe in. If the writer of this letter is now sincere and has really repented, his wife should forgive him and come back to him with the children. She must remember that even G-d himself receives a penitent with open arms.
The Hebrew-Christian evangelists are a big nuisance to the Jewish communities of Germany, especially the Russian Jewish immigrants. They have their big events in city squares; “Come hear the Jew who has seen the light and accepted Jesus.” Their audiences are composed of Christians both Russian-speaking and German but only once in a great while is there a Jew among them. I read about these Hebrew-Christian evangelists in Berlin, Frankfurt and Essen, and they admit on their website that they make very little headway among the Jews. But they make a good living preaching to the Gentiles, who love to see what they think is a Jew on the platform who has been converted to Christianity.
*Note: this blitsbrivl – and my “response” are barely modified versions of the following letter to the editor, from 1913, one hundred years ago: Anonymous Jewish Russian Male, fl. 1913, Letter from Anonymous Jewish Russian Male, 1913 in A Bintel Brief, vol. 1: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward. Metzger, Isaac, comp. and ed.. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971, p. 214.