A Day of Small Beginnings (65 page)

Precious guardian, now among the great line of women after Miriam

Who awakened a family with your Tune

And with an open heart and a deep well of knowledge taught your children to love God

We have returned, and will return.

Rafael nodded decisively. The image of his face as he stood in the forest was so inextricably bound to her memory of Freidl,
it made Ellen cry.

They dug a hole and set the stone in place. Marek stood to the side as a witness, his hands clasped before him. Ellen lit
a Yahrzeit candle, Rafael placed a pebble on top, and together they recited El Molei Rachamim.

Not long after, as they left the gravesite, Ellen grabbed a handful of grass and opened her palm. The wind blew the blades
around the trees and sent up a warm summer smell of earth and living things.

This book could not have been written without the counsel of my husband’s family, the Lipsmans, and their extended family,
the Goldfarbs, the Bulkas, and the Strums, Polish Jews who, unlike my family, did not come to America in time to escape the
calamity that befell their world in the 1930s and 40s. Their generosity in sharing an intimate knowledge of Polish Jewish
relations and the flavor of their childhoods, their explanations of Polish and Yiddish linguistic subtleties, their assistance
in explaining how life was in a town like Zokof, whose fictional name was their creation, all inform this story. So, too,
did a trip to Poland I made with several of them and their grown children, in the 1990s, when we visited their hometown of
Zwolen, whose cemetery, forested and bereft of gravestones, was haunted by the cacophony of the crows nesting above.

For years of devoted, ruthlessly honest editing, I thank the angels of my writing group, Carol Abrams, Ann Bronston, Carrie
Hauman, Truusje Kushner, Jeanne McCafferty, Sandi Tarling Powazek, and Linda Temkin. Their spirited engagement with the book’s
characters convinced me that this is a more universal story than I had originally thought.

I thank my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, for staying up all night reading my manuscript the day she received it and for her
passionate work ever since on its behalf.

For her early enthusiasm and for her insightful suggestions about the manuscript, I can forgive my editor, Judy Clain, her
lack of interest in dance. Thanks, too, to all the dedicated people at Little, Brown who have put so much effort into giving
this book its final form and delivering it to the public.

I want to express my special appreciation to my rabbi, Jeffrey Marx, of the Santa Monica Synagogue. His weekly Torah study
classes and far-ranging knowledge of all things biblical, historical, and obscure, secular and religious, have been invaluable
resources for me both as a writer and as a person.

No acknowledgments could be complete without recognizing the role family has played in bringing this novel to life. Special
thanks to my mother, who brought dance, music, art, and adventure into our family life, and to my father, whose lifelong social
and political activism has been an inspiration to me and to my sister, Amy. No less important, I thank my husband, Walter
Lipsman, who among other acts of kindness, if not bravery, sent me off to Poland, leaving him with our five-year-old and eight-month-old daughters, Ariana and Maya, in tow. If this story contributes to their understanding of the world, it will have
more than met its intended purpose.

L
ISA
P
EARL
R
OSENBAUM
has worked as both a choreographer and a lawyer. She studied religion and philosophy at New York University and completed
postgraduate work in international relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband,
Walter Lipsman, and their daughters, Ariana and Maya. This is her first novel.