What a Dream

I happened upon this documentary. It's about a young Jewish woman who tries to regain her Hassidic father's attention by schlepping through post-war Hungary looking for a couch that belonged to the family. The story of Pearl Gluck's Divan is a metaphor for assimilation in America. Tousled-haired, Yiddish-speaking, courageous Gluck is torn between the simple comforts of an unquestioning Hassidic world in Boro Park, Brooklyn, New York and the enticements of a secular, and oh-so-questioning Jewish intellectualism I associate with the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The former shtetls in Hungary surrounded by forests of birch trees that she filmed are probably very much like the Petrikow from where my own father came. The admonitions she received from her father and his Hassidic brethren to marry, tame her hair, and be quiet are also very familiar. I ached watching her reconnect with her father recognizing the silent joy in spending time just laughing and talking.

But for some reason, all this made me dream of Nazis. In my dream it was the day before I knew the Nazis were going to take over again. I wanted to get out. I saw city buses passing my street; all of them going to freedom, but I wouldn't leave without my family. And then an Aryan-looking man arrived with a clipboard and called out my name.

My heart was pounding; I was frightened; there were brutal murders, gratuitious violence and blood-soaked bodies that seemed commonplace. There was more to the dream, a lot of it inexplicable, but that's the gist.

I see this lovely young woman and the collection of former Hasids who are her friends and I realize she could be the daughter I never had; and I wonder why.

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