REMEMBERING UNCLE AVRAM, THE AMATEUR MATCHMAKER ON VALENTINE’S DAY 2017

© Peter Tarjan

My Uncle Avram Löbl (z”l) was born 110 years ago in Öcsény, a tiny village in southwestern Hungary. He was the youngest child of Uncle Náci (z”l), my paternal grandmother’s older brother. He was known as Anti, Antal, Bandi, András and Abraham at various points in his life, but he was known as Adon Avram Lobl in Meron, Israel, where he settled in 1957.

As a young man, Avram became a furniture maker. He made his way to Strasbourg to perfect his skills. It is a mystery how he got by as throughout his long life he only spoke Hungarian with any fluency.

Upon return, he opened his shop in Bonyhád, a small town in the same area. He married a girl from an orthodox family and became the father of my cousin, Erica, who at the age of ten, along with her mother perished in Auschwitz in July 1944, while Avram survived in the forced labor service for Jewish men. He returned to Bonyhád, resumed his trade and married for the second time another survivor, Rózsika. István, their blond baby boy was born in 1948.

There were only three survivors in the large Löbl family, Uncle Feri and Judith or “Jutka,” his 16-year old daughter, and Magdi, Avram’s other niece, about 20 at the time of her liberation.

The Vidor family had a huge house kitty-corner from Avram’s house. “Gyurka” (George) was the only survivor in that family. He was a year or two older than Magdi, a nice, cultured young man, very lonely, hoping to become a lawyer. Avram planned their match by inviting Magdi to visit him from another village and the two lonely heart orphans were soon married. After Gyurka completed his studies in law by correspondence, they settled in Pécs, the largest town in the area, where they are still living today in 2017. Gyurka is 93 and Magdi is 91. They are very proud of their son, a retired judge and their only granddaughter, an anesthesiologist.

During the 1956 Uprising a bunch of Jewish families hired a bus in Bonyhád that took them to the border to escape to Austria and subsequently settled in Tel Aviv. Avram stayed behind as he did not want to lose his hard-earned machine tools. Shortly after the failed uprising, the government gave permission to some Jewish families to leave legally. Avram and Rózsika decided to follow their former neighbors and arrived in Israel along with most of his shop equipment in 1957. The immigration officials asked him where he would like to settle down.. His answer was very specific:

–         In a small town where the weather is moderate, where the people are religious, but not too religious, and of course, where they speak Hungarian.

–         Moshav Meron! – shouted the official.

Meron, in the Galilee, a few miles from Lebanon, was founded by Hungarian speaking immigrants after the Shoah. Avram’s family received a tiny concrete house there with a solar water heater on the roof, a piece of land, where after clearing the rocks they planted plum trees, a shed for his tools and a chicken coop, called a lul, where they raised about 1200 chickens every 11 weeks. István became Yisrael and the family was getting used to their new life when Rózsika became ill and died of cancer in 1960.

Avram waited until the prescribed mourning period was over and then took a bus to Tel Aviv, where he looked up his former neighbors from Bonyhád. He asked them whether they knew of any eligible ladies, whom he could marry, as he needed someone to help with the orchard, the chickens and run his tiny household. When asked what sort of woman he had in mind, again, he was ready with the specifications:

–         Modest, comparable in age, able to run a kosher household, willing to live in a tiny community, work hard and, of course, speak Hungarian!

His friends introduced Avram to Klari, a recently widowed lady from Oradea, also known as Nagyvárad, a Hungarian speaking city in Romania. Avram invited Klari to dinner and as they parted, he told her:

                – I’ll be back it two weeks!

As promised, he returned on schedule, they went out to dinner again where Avram asked Klari for an answer. She replied:

                – What’s the question?

When he explained his situation, Klari asked for three weeks to consider the proposition. She had lived in cities all her life, wasn’t religious, had no idea how to keep a kosher house and had a twelve year old daughter, Esther, to care for.

To keep the story short, they married and lived their hard life happily until Avram’s death in 2002.

But they faced an immediate problem: Esther and Yisrael could not live under the same roof according to orthodox tradition as they were not related by blood, only by their parents’ marriage. The solution was pragmatic: both kids were sent to ultra-orthodox boarding schools, where they were accepted without any cost to their parents, but heavily indoctrinated. – Klari once told us that during the kids’ school holidays Yisrael was following Klari’s every step to be sure that kashrut was observed to the last detail.

Once Avram established himself to some degree, he sent a formal invitation to Jutka who was already past thirty, living alone and working in Budapest. The formal letter sufficed to get Jutka a passport and a permit to leave the country for three months while keeping her job. As soon as she arrived in Israel, Avram said to her:

– You are not going back!

Jutka’s answer was straightforward:

–         No way! I have a good job and a nice apartment there, and I don’t speak Hebrew!

–         Nor do I – said Uncle Avram – but there must be something that would keep you here?

–         Yeah, a husband…

Not an easy problem… Jutka was born with hip dysplasia, grew up to be very short, sweet, but far from being a beauty.

Avram was determined to find her a mate. He took the bus this time to Sefad, about 8 miles from Meron and asked his Hungarian speaking acquaintances whether they knew any eligible bachelors, who were suited for his short but sweet little niece. He was directed to Yisrael Zwecher, who owned a shoe store with his sister and her husband. Yisrael was about forty, also very short, with the reputation for a ladies’ man. He was born in a village in the Carpathian Mountains where the Jews spoke Yiddish and the locals spoke several languages including Slovakian, Hungarian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Russian, Ruthenian and other dialects. Zwecher completed six grades in elementary school, two years in a Slovak school, two in Hungarian and two more in Russian, as the area was annexed from Czechoslovakia by Hungary in 1938 and  by the Soviet Union in 1945. As a little boy, he attended a cheder, a Hebrew school, but as an adult, he showed little interest in religion.

Yisrael was considered financially stable and successful as he owned a Vespa scooter, a luxury in Israel at the time. He rode his Vespa to Meron and began to date Jutka. They had a nice time together, but Jutka’s visa was soon to expire and she was preparing to return to Budapest. Avram was not going to let that happen. He took the bus to Sefad, went to the Zwechers’s store and asked Yisrael:

–         Adon Zwecher, what do you think of my niece, Jutka?

–         She is a sweet, young lady.

–         But what are your plans regarding her?

–         I don’t have any plans…

–         But do you know that she is going to return to Hungary soon?

–         Hm…

–         If you two were married, she’d stay…

Score another match for Avram!

Jutka and Yisrael were soon married and settled in Sefad. For many years, almost every Friday they rode their Vespa toward Meron, where they left it in a ditch and walked into the gated moshav to have Shabbos dinner with the Löbls. At the end of the evening they said goodbye, walked back to the ditch and rode back to Sefad. Avram never asked them how they got there and how they were going to get home. It was enough not to know to calm his conscience.

Susanna and I visited Israel for the first time in 1968, a year after the victorious 1967 war. Just a day or two before Pesach, we took an Egged bus from Haifa to Meron. The whole country seemed to be on the road to get home for Pesach. Susanna and I were the only foreigners on the bus and everyone was very nice and concerned about us. Susanna was pregnant with our first child and they gave her a seat in the first row near the driver. I stood for some time until I got a seat in the back. The person opposite to me on the aisle kept two chickens – tied together by their legs – on the floor of the aisle. Every time the bus stopped, the chickens slid forward and usually stopped next to Susanna, where they tended to relieve themselves. Quite an experience for a girl born in Los Angeles and raised in Manhattan…

Some of the passengers were curious about our business and each time one of them got off the bus, they reminded the driver to be sure to stop at Meron, where there was a simple pole marking the Egged stop. It was a hot day in April with all the windows open. As we approached the pole at Meron a bunch of passengers leaned out the window, shouting in Hungarian:

–         Adon Lobl, vendégek jöttek! [Meaning, Mr. Lobl, guests are coming!]

I was stunned. Indeed, Uncle Avram was waiting for us with his bicycle at the bus stop and we fell into his arms after about 14 years.

We spent the first part of Pesach with them. Avram and Klari were happy to have us, Esther was very reserved, my cousin Yisrael seemed very tense as he had become a heavy smoker and had to be without nicotine for the Shabbat. When we asked their parents about the kids’ future, all they said:

–         We hope that we won’t have to sit on the floor at their wedding.

We asked for an explanation. The folks in the next village were from Yemen, whom they called “Tayman,” who kept their tradition of sitting on the floors at festive events, such as weddings. We were stunned again to discover the prejudices of my Holocaust survivor uncle and his wife.

To close this shaggy-dog story, Avram and Klari’s dream came true. Yisrael and Esther were married to each other and on my second visit to Israel in 1983 they already had four young children.

We visited Israel once more in 2008. Again, we took a bus from Jerusalem to Meron. As the bus was climbing the hills, a crazy driver in a silver Citroën cut in front of the bus, slowed and forced the bus to stop. A tall, blond guy got out of the car, came to the door of the bus that the driver opened for him, stuck his head through the door and shouted:

–         Peter, get off the bus, it’s me, Yisrael!

Like father, like son… We had a nice reunion with Yisrael, who had already retired as a colonel from the IDF and became a tour director for orthodox Jews who wished to tour Western Europe and China. Yisrael guaranteed glatt-kosher meals for them even in China and led their religious services.

Sadly, by the time of my next visit to Israel, Yisrael had passed away from cancer, like his mother. Klari was gone as well, but the four Löbl grandchildren were raising Avram’s 14 great-grandchildren. Jutka proudly told me, a non-practicing Jew, that someday there will be a minyan entirely made up of Avram’s grandsons.

May Avram, the matchmaker, rest in peace near the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Meron.

P.S. For home work, figure out how many ways Yisrael and Esther were related to each other!