“Once upon a time in Bukovina” could be an opening sentence of a fairytale or exotic fiction set in a distant land. However, it’s neither. Instead it’s a true story about Fanny and Gabriel, the grandparents of Israeli author Nava Semel. Their story affirms, “truth usurps fiction.”
Gabriel Herzig a handsome yeshiva student from a distinguished family’ strikes a deal with the matchmaker to marry 18 year-old “reasonable looking” Fanny Katz. Gabriel seals the engagement with a sapphire ring. It’s all kosher! They plan a wedding.
When WW l explodes in 1914, they postpone the marriage…indefinitely. Gabriel is conscripted into the Austria-Hungarian army. After his commander is blown up Corporal Gabriel Herzig deserts. He crosses the border into the hot arms of a war widow, Larissa, a Russian farmer with whom Gabriel remains three years beyond the war’s end. No-one hears from him. Back in Bukovina, everyone but Fanny believes Gabriel was probably killed in the war. “Stubborn as a dybbuk” Fanny takes her cue from the faithful Penelope, in Homer’s Odyssey, who waited for her beloved Ulysses for 18 years. Fanny stands firm. Her one and only Gabriel will return to her. He does.
Gabriel and Fanny marry on the condition Fanny never asks where he was during the post-war years. She doesn’t. Even in her erotic fantasies, Fanny dreams only about Gabriel. Gabriel dreams only about making money. He sees his future in America. In 1921, after the birth of their son Yitzhak, Gabriel, again, abandons Fanny with the promise to send for her and Yitzhak. He vanishes for three decades.
During all those years Fanny raises her only son and barely survives the Holocaust trapped in Transnistra, “the Romanian Auschwitz” where 130,000 Jews were murdered. Yet with unshakable faithfulness, Fanny awaits word from her husband.
His dreams fulfilled in America, Gabriel spends his mornings working at the New York stock exchange. In the afternoon Gabriel attends movies. In the evening he is with Clara Mandel, a Hungarian immigrant. A decent woman Clara doesn’t want to “live in sin”. She wants to become Gabriel’s “kosher wife.” First however Clara must find Fanny, an Aguna, Fanny is tethered to her husband by Jewish law until he releases her. More materially, would Fanny ever relinquish her status as Gabriel’s wife?
An emotionally gripping book with palpable characters that leap off the pages in every chapter, Fanny and Gabriel speaks of “truth sprinkled with blips of fiction” breaks the boundaries of love. A perfect read for romantics, dreamers, love-bugs and long suffering wives.
