Is there a Mercedes in Australia?

The story begins somewhere in the far-off steppes of Siberia, where I had two "cousins" (my cousins), who lived with their mother and their sickly father. Their father was exiled to Siberia because he was suspected of being anti-communist due to his ownership of a small newsstand in Bessarabia.

When he arrived in the Siberian steppes, the authorities checked what he was suitable for. It turned out that there were three options:
1, to spend many years in prison.
2, to work in hard forced labor.
3, after giving him a test, they decided on the spot that he would work on the railway. There they noticed that he was too talented to do hard work, and then it was decided to appoint him to the position of team leader in the work to electrify the Trans-Siberian Railway, whose track length is about 10,000 km, about the same as the distance from Tel Aviv to New York.

He had two daughters, whose Hebrew names were Nitza and Ahova. His wife and the daughters' mother was a doctor, and overall the family did quite well, in a place known to be one of the most difficult places to live in the world.

I have no idea how they managed to discover our address in Poland after the end of World War II, and so letters from them began to arrive once a month. In their letters, they described their difficult and unbearable situation in Siberia, and the girls' father never stopped complaining about his poor health. Each letter that arrived was worse than the previous one, and in it Uncle Shalom, he would lament his fate as a terminally ill man. After about six months, a letter arrived from Shalom announcing that his wife had passed away…

The uncle's eldest daughter, Nitza, was an English teacher, and the younger, Ahuva, was a French teacher. In the 70s, the period of the "refuseniks" (refugees) began in the Soviet Union. Immigrants from behind the Iron Curtain began to arrive in Israel. Indeed, Nitza arrived, and the agency immediately arranged an apartment and even a job for her. Although she stated that she wanted to live near her family in Haifa, she soon realized that the city of the future in Israel was Tel Aviv. She managed quite well in the outskirts of the big city and was successful in her work, even though her students memorized Shakespeare with an Eastern European accent...

Her main concern was for her lover, the French teacher, her younger sister's husband and children, and she also worried about what would happen to her elderly father, who had suffered greatly for the past 30 years?! However, it turned out that "there is a God," and her sister, her husband and children, along with the sisters' elderly father, arrived at the port of Haifa. I came to greet them as they waited to unload their cargo from the ship.

Her beloved, she smiled and was very pleased. In contrast, her husband did not contribute any smile, it seemed that he was missing something… His last name was “Lavari”, which sounded strange in Russian, but I soon discovered that the name was strictly Hebrew, “Lev-Ari”. I asked him: “How did you come to Israel with such a name, well done!”

"Yes," he answered me, "Everyone says it's a very beautiful name in Israel, but I suffered a lot in Russia because of it."

The agency people in Haifa were very pleased with the Russian immigration. Lev Ari, was a doctor of physics. Within a short time, they introduced him to representatives from the Technion, and the latter arranged for him a good job as a scientist and researcher. The family received an apartment in Ramot Remez. His beloved was offered a job as a French teacher at the "Alliance" school in Haifa.

Old Shalom never ceased to admire the State of Israel. He looked at the view from the Carmel, and said in Russian: "Haifa is a beautiful city! Where else in the world does such an amazing view exist? And all of this is ours, the Jews. How did we get such a wonderful country after two thousand years of exile, the world wars, the War of Independence, and more." Due to his advanced age, he was accepted into a nursing home in one of the kriyas, where he lived in a one-and-a-half-room apartment that also had a refrigerator and a television. In that house there was a senior citizens' club, many of whom spoke Russian. He was very pleased and said: "Since I have received so much from the Jewish state, I should also contribute to it!" He volunteered at the "Soldier's Home", ran errands for the office, became popular with the employees there, and several times a week, he would travel from the kriyas to downtown Haifa for work. He was really happy, went to listen to concerts in the auditorium, and even taught himself Spanish, which was his sixth language.

One day he told us: "How angry I am with my son-in-law Lev-Ari! What a guy who complains all the time and claims that he had a bad time in Israel. You can imagine how good he was in Siberia, it was cold and there was not enough food." It turned out for Lev-Ari that within one year of living in Israel, he would not own a Mercedes. In Russia, he dreamed of a luxurious Mercedes-Benz. Lev-Ari began to be interested in emigrating from Israel, and the two countries that came into consideration for him were Canada and Australia.

However, in order to move to another country, visas were needed, as well as a lot of money for travel and renting an apartment abroad. From whom could he receive the necessary amount of money? The kind donors were found, namely our missionary friends whose Haifa branch is located on Persim Street. They immediately embraced the lost family and organized for them the necessary documents and the money needed for the trip.

Uncle Shalom was very angry and said: "After all our suffering in the Holocaust and in exile, the impudent son-in-law is taking my daughter and grandchildren to Australia, to the other end of the world?!"

Lev-Ari promised the missionaries in Haifa that he would begin to believe in Jesus Messiah. (Because what did he care, after all, in communist and atheistic Russia, superstitions about God had no importance whatsoever).

The Lev Ari family immigrated to Melbourne, Australia. Lev Ari was accepted to work at the university there as a junior lecturer. They lived modestly and once every two years, Ahuva, would come to visit in Haifa. She stayed in the apartment of Shalom, her beloved father. She avoided talking about her life in Australia and only mentioned that her sons did not like Australia and preferred to live in Europe. I asked her if they had a car. She replied that they had a small used Hyundai. I wanted to ask: "What about the Mercedes you wanted so much?" but I refrained.

The years passed, and Shalom reached almost 100 years of age, and then he became very ill. Ahuva came to visit him for the last time. She was very sad, because she knew that her father's days were numbered. At his sickbed I asked her: "You promised to be believing Christians, did you keep your promise?"

Ahuva smiled sadly and said: "What's the matter? Now, when Lev-Ari has retired, he suddenly remembers that he is Jewish, has converted and spends most of his time in the synagogue in Melbourne."