Eric Bymel: Two Sons, Two Decisions

In this excerpt, Eric discusses his (surprise!) traditional Yemenite wedding to Dassi as well as feelings regarding his children's participation in the Israeli army.
***************
(What did your wife’s parents think of you?)

They liked me very much immediately. I liked them also, and it was very comfortable. I liked the food. When you like the food, it’s very easy then, because you don’t make faces. Not only do you not make faces, you want more. So it was great. I think that helps a lot because it’s part of the culture. They are in general very liberal. Even though they’re religious, they don’t force their religion. We had our clashes about different things. But in general it was very easy-going, free. They keep Saturday, they keep Shabbat. We don’t. We mix milk and meat [referring to kosher dietary laws]. They don’t. And so on. But they don’t force it on us. We don’t force it on them, either.

(What about your wedding?)

Our wedding was very special. Unfortunately, my parents couldn’t come, because they had just escaped from El Salvador. They were setting up camp in Miami, so when we got married they were barely there. So they said to me, “Well, either we somehow make it, or we’ll pay you for your honeymoon and you come to the States.” That sounded attractive, so we decided we’d take that offer. So it was special because we prepared the wedding ourselves without all the traditional wedding things. We rented a little restaurant for the evening and we brought the plants ourselves from our garden to decorate it. I wore jeans and sandals and a shirt and Dassi bought a white dress that she found at the flea market and she fixed her hair alone and put flowers on it from the garden. So it was very simple.

We didn’t want to make a big deal. What was even more special was that Dassi decided she wanted to have a traditional Yemenite wedding, but she didn’t tell me about it. Have you seen pictures of Yemenite brides? They wear huge amounts of jewelry from top to bottom. She didn’t know how to go about it, but she wanted to surprise me. So she decided to learn Yemenite dances and songs and joined a troupe. She said to them, “I’ll join you on condition that you come to my wedding and dance.” So she joins them and they help her out. I didn’t know of this. This went on for months, this plan. Then the rabbi who married us, his wife had this traditional Yemenite bride jewelry and all that. So she said, “OK, these are the jewels. Please could you dress me up as a Yemenite bride?” “Sure, I’ll do that.” So all this, of course, clandestinely. Nothing was told. I had no idea, no inkling of what was going on.

So we had the traditional wedding with chuppah and breaking the glass and all that, and then she said to me, “Listen, I have something important to do. I’ll come back in a second.” So she left as we finished the ceremony, she left to the side, and got dressed up as a Yemenite bride, and all the dancers came out in their dress, dancing, and the men also danced in front of me, took me—we have this on film. So it’s special. It was amazing. It was a complete surprise. For all the guests, too. For her family, too.

(What did the family say? They must have been thrilled.)

They were thrilled. They were awed. You can ask Perla [Meissner] about that. She was there. It was amazing. Completely amazing. Of course, surprising, but fascinating. The dances, the songs, the whole thing. I didn’t want it to finish. They did maybe four or five songs, that was it. That was their show. It was great.

This was in 1980. So after that, we—the whole wedding was completely unconventional, the way we were dressed, how we behaved. Good friends of ours got married on the same day, so we finished the wedding, everybody finished eating and left, and so we went to their wedding after that. The whole way we dealt with it was completely different.

And a few days later we left for the States.

(And did you take a tour, or you just went to Florida?)

No, we took a tour. We went to Florida. We went to Chicago, where my sister was living. We went to California. We went to New York. It was fun.

(Was that Dassi’s first time in the States?)

Yeah.

(Was she born in Israel?)

She was born in Israel. She was born in ’52.

(Did they speak Arabic?)

They speak Arabic, but at home they spoke Hebrew.

(Does she understand? Does she speak Arabic?)

Very little. She’s sorry about that. But at the time, there was a lot of pressure on people to speak in Hebrew. And I think they were embarrassed. The children, they didn’t want them to be considered Arabs. If they spoke Arabic or Yemenite, it was looked down upon. So that was a taboo.

(During college, did you go back to Salvador a few times to visit?)

Yeah, a few times.

(How were those visits?)

Not easy. Not easy. I was sort of disconnected already. I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know what——like a time machine, you know, just meet certain people, see certain things, not too much of it, though, because I had mixed memories, mixed feelings about the school and about the people I knew then, although I know that I missed a few class reunions. I was warned that next time I have to come.

(When’s the last time you were there?)

I left the morning that Ernesto Liebes was buried. A few hours later I left, and since then I haven’t been back, so it’s twenty-five years, more or less.

(And you left on quite a sour note?)

Yeah.

(What about your children? You were married in 1980.)

Yuval was born in 1981, Ofer in ’84, and Maayan is sixteen.

(And the oldest one has already finished with the army?)

Finished with the army and he’s already starting his third year at university.

(So one son has gone through the army. How does that make you feel? I mean, part of living in Israel is—having your children, both boys and girls, join the army. Is it a difficult part of being Israeli?)

Yeah. I accept it. It’s a part of me. I (pause) I used to consider myself a pacifist. But I think looking back, it wasn’t necessarily so. I just thought that the army would be a horrible experience and you should get out of it somehow. But once I was summoned and I went, I didn’t have to deal with army—I didn’t have to kill anybody, I didn’t have to oppress anybody, you know. So luckily, I didn’t deal with it, really. But I learned to manage a rifle and so on. So there was no pacifist there. But Yuval very much wanted to go to the army. I said to him, “Why don’t you defer it? You can study and then go to the army.” He said, “No way. I’m going to the army, where they tell me to go. I want to go into the army, I want to go into attack. I want to do what I’m supposed to do.” He was very convinced.

(What did he end up doing in the army?)

He was a tanker—a tanker, it’s called? He was in a tank. He dealt with it. But he didn’t want to be an officer. They offered him to do an officer’s course and stay in the army for another year. He said, “No, I’ll do what I have to do and finish. I’ll go study. I don’t want to stay longer.” Ofer, on the other hand, refused. He said, “I am not going to the army. I’m not taking part in this. I don’t believe in this. It’s wrong.” He had all these arguments, and it was a very tense time at home. Because the difference between them is two and a half years. So one was in the army and the other one was playing around, saying, “I’m not going.” It was a very difficult time, a lot of tension, a lot of anger and resentment. Yuval, I think up to now… he still hasn’t gotten over it. He resents the fact that we did not force Ofer to go to the army. So we had a lot of arguments, a lot of dinner time was dedicated to that. Our dinners are Friday-night dinners, you know. That’s when we have a lot of time to be together and we talk and——usually have a lot of fun. It’s very easy-going. I remember Ofer once brought a girlfriend from Germany. She had dinner with us Friday. We talked about this and that. It was very nice. And after dinner, she said to him, “I’ve never had a dinner like that. At dinner we always fight. There’s always tension. It’s always, eat this, don’t eat that, don’t forget this, do that. And your parents are completely different.” We didn’t think of it. For us it’s natural. We just talk about whatever comes up, have fun, make jokes. They have a lot of fun making fun of us, the kids, you know, our different mannerisms, what we emphasize, how we cook, how we prepare it, “This came out horrible.” They don’t pretend. Whatever they think, they say. So it’s very good. When I look back on my childhood, you know, it was very different. We had to behave. We had to listen. We didn’t talk unless we were told to talk, things like that. It was very strict. We are completely not strict. We are lenient, maybe too lenient sometimes, but I say, what the hell? We die anyway, so we might as well enjoy ourselves somehow, if we can, and make the best of it. I think that’s one of my basic philosophies now.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.