All of us have experiences in life that can be described as “lives well lived.” In truth, there are hundreds of “stories” out there. Think about it – and I do think about it often – every Jew alive today and every observant Jew, especially, is a miracle. We have endured so many centuries of mistreatment that anyone who somehow survived and is now living a Jewish life is a nes, a miracle.
From time to time, Rabbi Dovid
Katz asks me to profile an interesting person. Those who have lived in
Baltimore for a long time have probably met Esther and Roni Matyas. Esther was
a caterer for decades. Roni is a professional traiberer, trained
to remove certain veins and to salt the meat after an animal has been shechted.
In Hebrew, this is called nikur and melicha. Roni
did this for many years and also served as a mashgiach in the
slaughterhouse. He is proud to have received a letter from Rabbi Moshe
Heinemann permitting him to perform these functions at Ner Israel. But Roni had
a life before he came to the goldene medina, and Rabbi Katz was
correct that this story deserves to be told.
* * *
Roni was born after World War II in
Baia Mare, a small town near Satmar, in Romania, and lived there for the first
15 years of his life. Romania was a communist state dominated by the Soviet
Union, with religion and emigration forbidden. He remembers a melamed coming
to his home surreptitiously, hiding the sefer in his coat.
After 15 years, a policeman came to their door and informed his parents that
they could leave. He said that the paper had been in his desk for many years,
and he was “tired of looking at it.” But there was one condition: their house
and its possessions would belong to the policeman.
In Romania of that time, there was
a price on each person’s head – less for simple people, more for the important
ones. Many Romanian Jews had survived the Holocaust, and the dictator,
Ceausescu, made a deal with the Chief Rabbi of Romania to sell them. The
new state of Israel paid for them with cash and agricultural products. Close to
a million Romanian Jews were let out over a 20-year period. Esther mentioned a
book entitled Ransom by Radu Ionescu, that documents that period. The
Israelis, of course, very much wanted all of them to go to Israel and sometimes
even sent planes to pick up departing Jews and take them directly to
Israel.
Esther’s family – parents, a
sister, and two brothers – crossed the border and went to Italy. One of her
brothers, Isaac Samuel, was able to go to the United States because he had an
uncle, Alexander David, living in Baltimore. Isaac lived with him for five
years and established himself here. The rest of the family went to Israel in
1969, but her father passed away after only two years.
Roni’s family arrived in Israel in
1964. They were asked where they would like to live. They said they had
family in Petach Tikvah and Netanya. At nightfall, they were put into a taxi,
and their journey began. None of them spoke Hebrew, and the taxi driver did not
speak any language that they knew. Finally, after a long ride in the middle of
the night, they pulled up to an apartment building and were told that this
would be their new home. Where were they? Yerucham, a small town near Dimona.
They went to sleep, and the next morning they saw that they were in the midbar,
the desert, literally. Roni’s father and mother both got jobs in clothing
factories. Roni got a job welding and doing construction work.
* * *
Then came 1967 and, with it, the
Six Day War. Roni volunteered for the army. He was not yet 18 and would not
have been drafted, but the army was happy to let him volunteer. Of course, he
didn’t actually fight during those six days. By the time he was assigned, the
fighting was over. But make no mistake: He was now in the army for a full
three-year term. In the picture of him in his uniform, you can see two patches
on the front. One says that he was a paratrooper and the other that he served
in Sinai. He was stationed near the Suez Canal and recalls that the soldiers
lived in underground bunkers near Mitla Pass. There had once been a railroad
through Gaza, and they used the metal as protection on the top of the bunker.
In 1969, Roni was transferred to
Gaza, where he remembers Ariel Sharon telling the shopkeepers that if they
didn’t stop the acts of terrorism of others, he would punish them by welding
shut the metal shutters on their stores. He also told everyone that if
someone in their family was caught doing terrorism, he would demolish their
houses. Hearing this from Roni, made me nostalgic for the “good old days,”
when tactics like that were sufficient.
Six years later, in 1973, the Yom
Kippur War broke out. By this time, Roni and Esther were married. Everyone was
called up for reserve duty with the message to report to their bases. They
would then be sent where they were needed. Roni was sent to Ismailia on the
Suez Canal. He was in the infantry on the front lines. With time, barbed wire was
put between the positions of the Egyptian and Israeli armies. There was regular
shooting from fortified positions. This went on from September till June 15,
when a ceasefire was called.
Roni told me that there was no
dining room for that entire period. They got manot krav.
I think in the American army it is called Ready-to-Eat meals. They got so many
of these meals that they had lots of leftovers. Their officers came up with an
idea that would save many lives. They negotiated with the Egyptian officers,
whose soldiers were pitifully hungry and did not get the level of nourishment
the Israelis got. The two sets of officers would meet in a pardes,
an orchard near their positions, and the Israelis gave their extra meals to the
Egyptians. Roni says that because they were being fed by the Israelis, they
would shoot in the air and not try to kill the Israelis. Over the many months
they were dug in, this tactic saved many lives.
* * *
Eventually, reserve soldiers were
discharged and went home. Roni and Esther decided to move to Baltimore. Esther explained
that her father had passed away and her mother wanted to be reunited with her
brother in Baltimore. Mr. Alexander David sponsored their emigration to this
country. Roni’s early job in Baltimore was at Shapiro’s Supermarket. He learned
how to do nikur and melicha, which became his
skill set, which he was able to use for many years in various places.
Now, my interview was over. I
realized that Roni had put his life on the line for am Yisrael and
spent years in hostile situations protecting the Jewish state. May Hashem
Yisbarach bless Roni and Esther with gefen, gezunt, parnassa, and nachas.
May we all have a shana tova, and may we merit peaceful conditions
for all of us, both in Israel and the Diaspora.
