Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

12 THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
clerk and given an application form to complete. When it came to the question
of nationality, she asked, naively, if she could write "Jewish." The clerk looked
through the information she had already entered and explained, apologetically,
that she could not. She would be in the same category as her mother, and
thus bear the taunting title "Russian." Later she would say at that moment she
felt the same pain as when she began to menstruate—something that occurs in
nature and can never be got rid of.
Larissa was not the only girl in the town who bore this mark of Cain. At
school they even formed a sorority of non-Jewish girls. They shielded each
other and tried to smudge the nationality information on their identity cards
to make it illegible, but that didn't work and they had to continue to carry
the incriminating document. At seventeen they all hastened to get a driver's
license, as that did not detail nationality and could substitute for an identity
card.
Then came the school's "Roots" trip to the death camps in Poland. A
problem arose. To obtain a passport, Larissa had to bring her identity card
to school. Fear that the entire class would discover her secret, as well as
her parents' limited means, made her forgo the trip. So she didn't get to see
Auschwitz, which has gradually been replacing Masada as the site of formative
memory in modern Jewish identity. She was, however, conscripted into
national military service, and although she tried to use her Russian national
status to avoid the draft—even writing a long letter to the recruiting office
about it—her request was turned down.
Military service actually did Larissa some good. Fumbling for the Bible
during the swearing-in ceremony, she trembled and even shed tears. For a
moment she forgot the little cross she had received from her maternal grandmother
upon leaving Russia as a little girl. Once in uniform, she felt she
belonged, and was convinced that from now on she would be taken for an
Israeli in every way. She turned her back on the detested, faltering Russian
culture of her parents, choosing to date only Sabras and avoiding Russian men.
Nothing pleased her more than to be told she did not look Russian, despite
the suspicious color of her hair. She even considered converting to Judaism.
Indeed, she went so far as to seek out the military rabbi, but then desisted at
the last moment. Though her mother was not devout, Larissa did not want to
abandon her to an isolated identity.
After her military service, Larissa moved to Tel Aviv. Fitting into the lively,
carefree city was easy. She had a new feeling that the nationality detailed on
her identity card was insignificant, and that her persistent sense of inferiority