The Mother Of Reinvention

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I was having Friday night dinner at a friend’s home when I noticed a new painting on the wall. It depicted a winter scene in a rather desolate area. “That looks like the place where our car broke down in Rumania,” I mentioned.

“Well there’s the artist,” the husband said pointing to Marguerita, an older female guest seated next to me, and then he pointed to another painting she had done, this one a colorful scene of spring flowers around a villa. She mentioned that she had started painting at the encouragement of her second husband soon after she made aliyah in 1990 with the wave of Russian olim. She also mentioned that she was still new at being religious and had started learning English.

Marguerita was born in Kiev in 1937, which makes her 78 today, and 54 when she made  aliyah and got married for a second time. She took up art a year later. I’m 54! I marveled at a woman who, at my age, had the energy to move to another country, learn a new language, find a new job, get remarried and pursue a new career, changing her life in every possible way.

The ability of this woman to reinvent herself at this age intrigued me, so I asked her about all the changes and how they came to be.

Well, the English lessons are for when she visits her grandson, his wife and two daughters in America. They sent her some tapes and I also noticed a Russian-English dictionary which looks older that Marguerita. She wants to be able to communicate with her great-granddaughters, after all.

I asked Marguerita why she didn’t join her family in the States as she has a green card. “Israel is home,” she replied. She said she felt at home from the moment she arrived. It was a combination of good mazal, the kindness of friends and, of course, the support network Russian olim provide for each other that insured she had a job within a week and a social circle almost immediately.

And the artwork? Well, Marguerita liked art, her daughter had studied art and Marguerita was doodling one day when her second husband, a Polish immigrant, suggested she take an art class at the Senior Center. She did and developed her considerable talent. The walls of her apartment are covered with many of her paintings, but she hasn’t painted in 11 years, since her second husband passed away. He was the one who had encouraged her to paint and when he left this world, he took her inspiration with him. The paintings are a mix of imitations of classic paintings from Renoir and Chagall to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (she says she still has to work on the smile), landscapes from around the world and portraits of people she’s encountered and famous people. The paintings are very good and imbued with Jewish heart and soul.

And religion? Well, one grandfather was a rabbi and the other a chazzan. “It’s in our blood,” she says.

Marguerita had always wanted to follow in her grandparents’ and daughter’s spiritual footsteps but her second husband wasn’t religious. After his death, she finally picked up the religious gauntlet and became shomer mitzvot. She has a religious friend who helps her, and some others, like my friend, who invite her for Shabbat.

And most of all, Marguerita feels that God has protected her all these years, making sure that she is cared for and looked after. He has also protected her family spiritually both in Russia, where Judaism was banned and practiced underground, and in America where intermarriage and assimilation are rampant. From her grandparents to her great-grandchildren, six generations, the line of Jewish continuity in her family has remained unbroken, Baruch Hashem! And she doesn’t forget where she came from. While she has never returned to Russia, she pays someone to look after her parents’ graves. From Kiev to Petach Tikva to the United States, the light of Torah continues to illuminate her family’s path.