Eric Bymel: An Introduction

Eric, born to Rita and Felix Bymel and the younger brother of Dian, was raised in El Salvador. Now living in Haifa, Israel, he is also husband to Dassi and father to Maayan, Ofer, and Yuval. In this excerpt, Eric describes the transition from life in El Salvador to Israel.
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(So by the time you were seventeen, you had Hebrew, German, Spanish, and English?)

When I came to Israel, I came before university started and I went to Ulpan. It was like a deluge, all these memories of Hebrew just washed came awash in my mind. It was fantastic. I knew the language! And I wasn’t a good student. Perla said I didn’t do my homework and all that. But it was all there, sitting there. So Ulpan was like a breeze, just fantastic. Everything came out. I could read the signs. I could talk to people. I could understand. I could watch television, within a couple of weeks. It was great! The same thing when I went to Germany. I was in Germany for half a year. I worked in a restaurant on the highway. So everything was there, available. It was great. Great.

(How was being in Germany? How old were you?)

I was twenty-four, sort of in between degrees. I took a year off and traveled a while. It was a lot of fun. I was always worried about who’s a Nazi and who’s not, who’s an ex-Nazi. I had awkward moments, when, (I worked with a whole staff of people at this restaurant), with some of them who were pretty old, maybe between fifty and sixty at the time. I remember one woman said to me, “Aren’t you going to pray?” I don’t remember, it was some holiday coming up. “No, I’m not Christian.” “What are you?” “I’m Jewish.” “Oh!” she said. She jumped, you know. I always—it was a very embarrassing moment in the way she jumped, probably because she thought, “Oh, it’s lucky I didn’t say anything anti-Semitic.” It seemed like that, because she immediately closed her mouth and then she said, “Oh, we helped a lot of Jews in World War II.” And it seemed false, that she was just covering up something. But since I was not the boss and I didn’t want to have any trouble there, any conflict, I just let it go.

(But it’s interesting you didn’t stop yourself from saying, “I’m Jewish.” That was a natural response for you.)

Oh, yes. I said to myself, “Whenever it comes up, I’m going to deal with it. I don’t care.”

(Were you ever resentful of the fact that you were Jewish? Like, “Oh, this is such a difficult identity to deal with in the world?”)

No. I remember at one point in my teenage-hood, I said to myself, “This is part of my personality, my being Jewish. And I don’t have to deal with it. I don’t have to show it off. I don’t have to go to synagogue and I don’t have to pray and I don’t have to wear a kippah and I don’t have to do all these external things—
to prove that I’m Jewish. It’s just part of me and that’s it. I’m not going to deal with it.” Maybe it was a way of rationalizing my behavior, but I didn’t want to do all these things that are done, like pray and go to synagogue and keep all these rules. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t identify with that. So that was my way of dealing with it. I don’t want to (pause) be told what to do, and I’m not going to give it away, either. I’m not going to say I’m not Jewish. I just am, and that’s it. Next. That’s how I dealt with it. And when I came to Israel, I was—it suddenly hit me of course that so many people here are Jewish, you know. That is when I said to myself, “That’s it. I don’t have to do all these external things to deal with my Judaism. I just am. That’s it. Next.”

(You were seventeen when you finished high school? And you came directly to Israel?)

Almost directly. About a month later.

(You didn’t want to go to the States?)

I was accepted in the States, in fact. I was accepted in U of Penn. My parents wanted me very much to go. “Oh,” they said, “Ivy League, go there, it’s the best! Go!” And of course the more they said they want me to go, the more I didn’t want to go. And they didn’t get it, of course. The more they didn’t want me to come to Israel, the more I wanted to come to Israel. It was a way to spite them, but yes—although looking back, it’s too bad. Maybe I should have gone, missed out on something. But I wanted very much to come to Israel.

(Had you visited before?)

No, just heard a lot, read a lot.

(You were ready to taste it. So you came here when you were seventeen, and you did the Ulpan for—?)

A couple of months.

(And then—?)

And then started studying biology at the Hebrew University.

(In Jerusalem?)

In Jerusalem.

(And you were studying for how long there?)

I was there for—I studied for about eight years. I did a degree in biology and then another degree in psychology and then a second degree in psychology.

(Wow. So—eight years.)

More or less.

(Did they ever say, “Oh, you have to go to the army?” Did they ever summon you?)

Not at that point, because I was always a potential immigrant. First I was a student, then a potential—I was never a real resident. When I finally became a resident, yes, I got summoned.

(And you—?)

I went. I went for—it was a short while, because I was then already married with kids, so I was there for four months, maybe. Basic training and another short time, a period of service.

(But you stay active for a certain amount of time? You can always be called, right?)

Yes.

(So where did you meet your wife?)

At the university. I met her at one of the cafeterias. That was in ’72 or ’73. It’s not clear in my mind. We always have arguments about that, because she said that she—I was with a mutual friend, and she said to him, “Oh, introduce me!” And he said to her, “You don’t have a chance. He has a girlfriend.” “Introduce me anyway!” So finally he did. And then she came to look for me at the dorms. She came to knock at my door. She doesn’t remember that. She always says, “It’s not true. I didn’t come look for you. I didn’t.” And I always remember that. I have this memory of her coming and this disagreement about that.

(Fight.)

(So you met there and you were dating someone else, though, at the time?)

Yes. She always saw me as a kid. She was going out with older guys, and “He’s just a kid,” you know. It was ’72 or ’73. I was eighteen, nineteen, maybe. She’s older than me. She was then twenty-one, twenty-two, so of course she saw me as a kid. So we only got together much later, a few years later when our paths crossed again. There was a click. She somehow rediscovered me, in a way. She always says that she was too busy talking about herself and suddenly she asked me some questions and discovered me.

(And what is her story? She was born in Israel?)

She was born in Israel. Her parents are Yemenite. They’re from Yemen.

(So that’s very different from your childhood.)

Oh, yeah.

(Did that cause any—not conflict, but I’m sure it made your lives interesting. How was that?)

It wasn’t an issue when we met. It came up somehow. For me, it didn’t play much of a role. I think I was trying to be—like, I always tried to break with conventions, so I also thought, “What does it matter, the background? It’s important who you are and what you do and what you are, not where your parents came from.”

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.