"It
appears the Jewish Ephrussi's have become fully integrated."
Babi "He can't connect with his ancestors unless he sees and touches the places where they lived."
Marcie"One of the questions or anomalies that de Waal doesn't really address is the Efrussi switch from Judaism to Church of England. The author has no comment on this happening. He attaches no explanation why the Jewish prayer for the dead "
Jude******************************************
We're left with the above questions...going into the Coda at the end of the book. (I keep asking myself the same question - what is a coda? A conclusion, an iteration of what has been said already?
Or is something added to the story? )
I agree with you, de Waal has no trouble describing things - specifically things he can see and touch. And he can understand his ancestors by what he can touch - and observe. Beyond that, he leaves us with the anomalies Jude refers to.
Maybe we are seeing a change in his understanding of the Ephrussi - the Efrussi ancestors - in his return visit to Odessa right before his book goes to the publisher.
On this trip, he seems to see beyond the crumbling Efrussi mansion - he mentions the Efrussi orphanage still operating in Odessa, the library, the school for Jewish children - with the astrolabe(?), menzula (?), the globe donated by the Efrussi boys... He sees the yellow sedar chair in the synagogue and thinks of Charles' chair... (this can't be Charles' chair, is it?)
Do you remember the Ephrussis in Vienna - their near-complete assimilation there? (Except for quiet (secret) donations, and recording births, deaths with the Rabbinate.) The Jews of Odessa were not afraid to be Jews, to practice outwardly who they were. Why did they leave? Remember Goncourt's description of Charles the dancer?- "The Poles forgot
Odessa, a city of pogroms..."
Edmund is beginning to think that Odessa was NOT where it all started for the Efrussis after all. He begins to think that he ought to make a trip to the shtetl (?) in the Ukraine if he really wants to understand his ancestors. But their town - Berdichev had been desroyed in the war...perhaps there was nothing left for him to touch there?
I'm trying to put all of this together - and think that in his indirect way, de Waal is trying to explain such anomalies as you've been noting.
That old saying comes to mind - you can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy. Or something like that.