Chapter 18

In Tel Aviv Ruth not only began to recover physically from her weight loss, but she also started a months-long binge of frantic dancing, drinking, and dating while she despaired about never finding a job. She met up with Viktor several times, and after she spent the night with him she noted, “When he did not do any more than I let him I knew that I really loved him and that he could get out of me whatever he wanted.” She hoped that Viktor could finally make her forget Jim, but unfortunately he would have to go back to Prague soon. Ruth admitted she “went to bed with him,” but that she had her doubts: “In the middle I realized it was another Gamal [Jim] affair, here today, gone tomorrow and myself knee deep in it, and like a fool I started crying and could not stop . . . sometimes I think he loves me too and is just waiting for me to take the lead, and then again I think no I’ll just make a fool of myself for he is not serious.”1

In between seeing Viktor, Ruth had many job interviews and lunch dates, visited Fred, who was now in a hospital in Tel Aviv, and tried to get settled in this new city. She wanted to marry Viktor and strategized about how to make it happen. When other women showed up at his apartment while she was there, she acted like she didn’t care, but she also cried like a “complete neurotic” while on another date with him, on the beach. She wrote a long diary entry while waiting in his apartment for him to come back from a trip to Jerusalem, with his roommate, Walter, singing French love songs to her and proposing to her. She asked, “Why is it that all the wrong men are running after me, and the one I want I cannot seem to get[?] This is really ironic . . .”2

Ruth did not believe in learning to love someone over time. She was instantly attracted to Viktor and explained why in her diary, comparing him to her ex-boyfriend Jim: “He too is soft on the inside, also much like a boy, proud to be a man, his career more important than anything, his own life and his idea. The good differences between the two are that the things Vic. stands for are the same to a big extent as what I stand for.”3 She knew deep down that she would never be satisfied in a relationship unless it was a true partnership of intellectual equals. She wanted more than just a warm body to financially support her and share a home: she desired a sparring partner to bounce ideas off and someone to help her better understand the world and her place in it. She had an obvious disdain for men who tried to overpower her or looked to her to save themselves from their depression or loneliness.

On Viktor’s last night in Israel, they discussed their feelings:

I also got it across to him that I was not quite as much of a butterfly as he thought I was, and in the end I told him that I loved him. I knew he was being honest when he told me his emotions were very mixed up. He liked me very much but did not know if it was love. That he hoped we would meet again some day, and that perhaps I just met him at the wrong time. He was married once and afraid to do it again, etc. etc.4

After going with him to the airport the next day, she reflected, “Maybe I’ll meet him again someday, and maybe I’ll even marry him . . . If he had asked me to marry him, I would have said yes, but even if I could I would not make him, for I don’t want to mess up his life, and I don’t know if I am strong enough to lead his kind of life, although I admire it. He takes his communism seriously, he knows what he wants to do and how to do it. That is the difference between him and me.”5

After Viktor left, Ruth continued to get settled in Tel Aviv. She bought new clothes, gained back the weight she had lost, visited friends, and tried to find a job, which grew increasingly discouraging. She knew she needed to learn Hebrew in order to be employable in Israel and debated spending serious time to learn it. She was depressed, writing frequently of her bouts of “the blues.” Even though she longed for Viktor, she went out on dates with different men almost every night. Just two weeks after Viktor left, she wrote:

True I had the worst blues yesterday, but after stooping so low that I let Diskin make love to me I decided I must take myself in hand. I feel really ashamed of myself at this rate. If it continues I might as well become a prostitute and the cold thing is I hate it…these boys…not only mean nothing to me, but I have not even respect for them. Finish—out—and I am not going to sleep myself into a job here—it is hideous.6

A week later, in the same fashion, she admitted of a man named Sigie, “[I let him] make love to me last night partly because I had drunk a lot[,] partly because I liked him, I wanted to be cuddled, etc., etc.” When he came by the next day and Ruth refused him, he said that someone told him that she had slept with Viktor also and that he was not actually divorced. Ruth agonized, “It is all so queer & crazy it gives me the creeps sometimes how everything gets around.” She also reflected on the fact that her dark side, which she worked to control, was emerging in these chaotic circumstances: “My obviously long suppressed desires to lawlessness, adventure, my love of playing with fire seem to more & more gain the upper hand, but if I have it in me to come out as the victor, or if I[,] like so many people here[,] will go under[,] I do not know.”7

Ruth went out with Sigie again, though, but did not want him to come into her apartment. On another date, he “promised to behave,” so she allowed him in. “First we had a big talk,” she wrote, “[and I] told him exactly that he cannot make love to me . . . that it was not fair to wear down my resistance with persistence . . . He then made love to me by force, I got mad . . . & went to spend the night alone on the beach. If I had not left I could have created such a row the whole town would have awakened.”8 The phrase “date rape” would not become a familiar term to describe these kinds of experiences of women until the 1990s, but it is clear this is what happened to Ruth. She exhibits a proto-feminist consciousness when she wrote of her feelings about the incident with Sigie, and possibly with other men: “During all these happenings, I think I also found part of the clue why I loved Jim & Vik. They are both men—all others are males—no matter how much they want a woman, they will only try up to a certain point. When [men] see [a] no go without force they are man enough not to use the cheap advantage of strength, & not to get mad and have hurt pride and never see her again.”9 Although she was disgusted with Sigie, his charm and manipulative cycle of apologies and flowers were hard for her to resist.

She went out with him again a week later and suffered through another humiliating spectacle when she refused to let him come in and he screamed at her outside her rented room and threw stones at her window for hours.10 Her upset landlord, Mrs. Sprung, ordered her out the next day. Ruth sought refuge with a new friend, Gad Pollack, who promised she could stay with his mother temporarily. It turned out his mother was out of town and Gad expected that Ruth would give in to his overtures in his bedroom. She was annoyed and refused him but was glad that he at least didn’t force himself on he

r. The next night she moved into the hotel Viktor had stayed in, although she could not afford it.11 Her move to Tel Aviv that summer was just the beginning of a never-ending revolving door. She would spend the next year and a half packing her bags over and over, getting kicked out of rented rooms, sharing apartments, and finding herself in hotel rooms for a litany of circumstances beyond her control. As in Zurich, Ruth had a constant dark feeling of homelessness and ached for a quiet, permanent place of her own.12

Sigie and Gad were not the only men she went out with during these early months in Tel Aviv. She made more than one date per day or evening and brought home many different men. Looking back months later, she alternated between embarrassment at her reckless behavior and a refusal to feel ashamed about it, mentioning it many times in her diary and often referring to it as some other state of reality: “[Gad] closed a rather brief but the more eccentric and not very nice period of my life—and yet—I’m not really ashamed—though my behavior was all but conventional or admirable—in a peculiar [way] I felt cleansed, revenged or something—it was all like a trance[,] not really me—it was as if my soul had left my body & my body was fending for itself.”13

Mirjam had grown increasingly worried about Ruth’s reputation and how it would reflect on the Schneider family. She asked Ruth if she planned to go back to the US, which Ruth found insulting.14 This postwar frenzy in Israel that Ruth participated in was probably similar to what was happening around the world as survivors of the unspeakable horrors of World War II sought to drown their traumatic memories in alcohol, sex, and mindless distractions. In September 1948, Ruth wrote to Rabbi Cohn, explaining her disgust at the men in Israel:

All, and I repeat this, all Palestinian males think if they pay one drink for a girl, she must go to bed with them! Otherwise, why waste 20 piasters! There is one way of getting a good job, that is sleeping your way into it…..sorry…..I do not believe in getting a job that way. Worse, even if you go out and pay your own way, and say no to a proposition[,] you are called a bitch, etc. etc. This goes for people in Histadrut, Sochnut, Army, Air force and government. I guess that too is a reason for my getting such a lovely reputation here….for men don’t go around telling people that I slap their faces in the middle of the street on the way home, and go home by myself, nor that I always pay my own way whether that be for dinner, drinks or dancing.15

Most days, she met with friends and acquaintances who gave her promising job leads. Some of these led to an interview for a secretarial job with strings attached—sexual favors for married men looking for a diversion. Ruth was also up against stiff competition for white-collar jobs that were often given to people with stronger connections (Protektia) than she had.16 She danced with men who name-dropped their powerful bosses or fathers and implied they could get her a secure position in the government. In a letter to Rabbi Cohn, she vented her frustration with the list of job contacts he had given her: “Bancover I met at a Histadrut reception, and pardon the vulgarism, he practically tried to make me at the reception while Golda Meyerson was giving a speech. Later he asked me to see him at his office, and the minute I entered he locked his room, but while trying to come close I whackingly boxed his ears.”17 This was the same speech she wrote about in her diary, complaining about this man who had harassed her: “Sunday afternoon I got to the Histadrut reception—was very impressed by the speech given by Golda Meyerson[,] whom I heard for the first time—also by some of the other people but very disgusted with Bancover.”18

Ruth was very excited about a position as an army photographer. After a good interview at the Press Information Office, she later went back to inquire again about the job but was told that the department could not hire women.19 Unemployment was starting to drive her stir-crazy. It wasn’t only the lack of money or desire for success that drove her to find a job; she also craved a sense of usefulness and structure to her days. Being busy and accomplishing tasks was how she burned her excessive energy, connected with like-minded coworkers, and kept her mind off depressing thoughts and memories. Israel was supposed to be a place where she could flourish in her career and where Jewish women were supposedly going to be treated as equals, but she had spent the last eight months barely treading water.

Chapter 19

Sometime in October, Ruth finally joined the Defense Army of Israel and got a position in the photography unit of the Press Information Office (or the PIO, as she called it), the same office where she had applied for the photographer job.1 In her oral history, Ruth claimed that she had landed this job through her “old friend” Golda Meir. In her letters and diaries, Ruth did mention seeing her give a speech in August, but she was not writing in her diary around the time she got the job a few months later. She later claimed that she went to Golda’s office and declared she wanted to join the army to learn Hebrew while working in the kitchen. Golda responded, “No, if you’re working in the kitchen, you’ll be learning how to peel potatoes.”2

After Ruth started the job, however, she was very disappointed. She sarcastically explained:

Photography? Ha, ha, what a laugh! Office work, ha, ha! A pleasant and decent boss??? Ha, ha. This time I have really outsmarted myself. Cannot I ever learn to take my loss in good time, before it is too late….this whole trip started out wrong, I should have known it would come to no good end. But could I admit defeat and go home like a sensible kid??? No. Or could I go to camp, and though uncomfortable, at least meet Palestinians, get some “Chawershaft” [camaraderie][?] [N]o, I had to be ambitious and different…..PIO…..ha, ha, fancy.3

She complained that her job could be done by a child, that other employees could get away with wearing civilian clothes, and that her wages were less than what she was paying for rent. She may have loathed the job, but she couldn’t just quit. Joining the Israeli army was a serious commitment, even though she retained her American citizenship and never sought Israeli citizenship. It was a temporary, six-month position, and then she would be offered a discharge with various options. Ruth did not get along with her boss, Lieutenant Colonel Moshe Pearlman. She knew that her coworker Alisa Cerf hated her and feared that she was after her own job.4 Once again Ruth felt trapped into being no more than a menial worker as she toiled away writing captions for photographs, increasingly alienated from the events documented in them.5 In a letter to a friend the following March, she described her five basic job duties: arranging and captioning thousands of photos, selecting photo series and captions for journalists, and occasionally taking photos herself and helping out with developing them in the lab.6

In other letters, she explained that the PIO served as a headquarters for English-language journalists and photographers. It was located in the Ritz Hotel, which had a restaurant and bar in the building and a terrace that faced the Mediterranean. She often stayed at the office until midnight, eating, talking, and drinking with them while working or writing letters.7 She vividly described it in another letter:

I am spending my days being ritzy at the ritz (Hotel). It’s really quite a place… the official hangout for foreign correspondents…with such “notables” in the field of journalism as Luter from Life and Time….Bilby of the New York Times…Rosenfeld of N.Y. Post….Robert Miller of the United Press […] They and their friends hang around the Ritz, which has a big lobby-press room where all official press conferences are held, where everyone works on their own little desk, dotting the w[hole?] of the place… including a post-office, censorship office…a fine restaurant, especially clean, fast and fancy service at the lowest price in town (Propaganda!) a bar, and upstairs offices and downstairs photographic laboratories. There I sit from 9 a.m. until 12 midnight many a time….there I am happy, and there I am sad! There I fight with the errand boys, and there I listen to Shertok. There I work, and there I get intoxicated (oh, please, don’t frown).8

Her pay was simply not enough to cover her expenses, even though she was now sharing an apartment with several roommates and kept meticulous account books. To make ends meet, Ruth bega

n to take on freelance jobs, mostly typing and German translation. She explained the satisfaction she got from one of these jobs: “Went to do some work for Spencer Irving of Cleveland—and really enjoyed it—it always has given me a happy feeling to work real hard and well and get a lot done—and especially if someone on top of that recognizes it.”9 Her expertise on Israel and world affairs proved useful for many of these positions.

Sixty-one years later she would look back at this job at the PIO with pride. She explained, “I think my biggest contribution to this whole English publicity bit was, I took a very firm stand and I said, ‘The pick-and-shovel days are over. Israel needs big-time money to get off the ground. You don’t get big-time money in support of paving a road with a pick and ax.’ And so I said, ‘Get away from this dumb publicity of the pioneer who does everything, and get with the people who are starting a state.’”10 She was very proud of a campaign she developed to publicize the Jaffa orange industry. Many years later, she would receive a certificate from Israel acknowledging her work as the state’s first photograph archivist and thanking her for her contributions to the country’s founding.11

Soon after she started her job, she went out to celebrate a successful air raid with the famous (but very small) 101st Squadron. “A pilot named Lee,” she recounted, “[who] has never taken me out, or spoken to me[,] walked in drunk and wanted to know who invited me to the party . . . also adding that I had sponged drinks off everybody in town and that I had slept with everybody in town . . . Well, I got so sore, I just stood up and [slapped] his face in public.”12 Even though she was no longer at the behest of potential employers, she would still have to regularly fend off passes, often from married men. She continued to mull over in her diary the sexism she faced in Israel. One galling incident on a beach particularly set her off:

Here it is the 20th century. An era of emancipation and modernism, and yet human beings and society are as interwoven and perhaps even more restricted because of their very freedom as in the Middle Ages. Especially for a girl. It is rather pathetic, just because a woman walks along the beach alone in the evening people get suspicious, turn around, want to strike up a conversation or want to pick her up. And if a girl comes to a new town, unless she has an escort, she can go to but very few places without at least attracting attention, that is usually unfavorable attention, if not men!

Tags: Kate Stewart Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net