Toby Teksler
The Cold Imagration
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om I’m hungry.” The little boy whimpered. Anna turns to her husband, “Izia, Boris needs some food.” “All we have is a bottle of vodka.” Pondering their options Anna and Izia looked around. They were in a small town, their train’s one stop on the journey from Ukraine to Vienna. They couldn’t find any food, and they knew there would be no opportunity to get food anytime soon. After a little while of asking other passengers, they found a man with some soup and Izia traded his bottle of vodka for the man’s soup. Moments later Izia came back brandishing the soup. But when they gave it two their son the two year old took one sip and said, “Mommy I don’t like it.”
In 1972 when Anna and Izia where allowed to leave Ukraine because of the growing anti-jewish sentiment in the Soviet Union. According to Bastian Vollmer, a researcher interested in migration policies around the world, “until 1970, only 2000 permits to leave Ukraine for Israel were issued. Emigration increased in the 1970s … during this decade, 81,000 permits for emigration to Israel were granted.” The Ukrainians didn’t want the Jews to live there anymore because they resented the fact that many of the Jews had better jobs and apartments, perhaps because of their strong emphasis on education and good work ethic. So they let many jews leave, but still not wanting to make their journey too easy they closed the restaurants that were usually open on the long train ride.
After the Teksler’s train stopped in Vienna Austria, they got on a plane to Israel. They knew it would be tough to be away from their entire family and the only place they had known their whole life. Once in Israel they were properly fed because Israel was aware of the conditions that Jewish people faced when leaving Ukraine. They were sent to a compound for six months to learn Hebrew, and after they went to live in a town just outside of Tel Aviv called Petah Tikva. Izia found a repair job in a TV factory and Anna worked as a music teacher. They appreciated their ability to openly practice their religion and to live in a jewish community. 2
Soon they learned that Izia would have to serve 6 weeks a year in the military, just as every other man of age 18 to 50 who lived in Israel. The program, called miluim, was intended to keep their men strong and trained in case of a war. Unfortunately the war did come on October 6 of 1973. The Egyptians and Syrians launched a coordinated attack against Israel hoping to win back territory that they lost in the third Arab-Israeli war, of 1967. They attacked on Yom Kippur, a sacred day of fasting and preparing for the Jewish New Year. Jewish custom also dictates us to not use any modern technology, not to drive cars or anything. Imagine a country where almost everyone is practicing these customs on their holiday, until they are attacked. 3
Izia was drafted to fight in the war and was sent to a small town in the north of Israel that bordered Lebanon to defend the Golam heights. According to Mitchell Bard, a well respected author/editor of 22 books about Israel, Izia and his fellow soldiers on the Golan Heights had, “... approximately 180 Israeli tanks facing an onslaught of 1,400 Syrian tanks.” The fighting was terrifying.
“When a cannon shoots, even if you are far away, you
the day success-
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can feel the ground shaking like an earthquake. It is scary.”
Despite the poor odds, the Isralies did end up winning and, after the dust settled, Izia and the other soldiers had fully defended the northern border of Israel.
While Izia was in combat watching his fellow soldiers die next to him Anna and Boris were back at their apartment in Petah Tikva. It would have been bad enough if they just had to worry about their husband and father coming home, but they had their own problems as well.
“During the war I had to be ready to run to the shelter, every apartment building had a shelter downstairs, and at the time Boris was only 3 years old. We prepared a little food and water to take with us because we could have been stuck down there for a while. We were on the third floor with no elevator, so we had to be ready to run fast. We were sitting there waiting scared because Israel was totally not ready for the war. It was tough!” After the longest few days of his life Izia returned home, but the war had caused Anna and Izzia to become afraid. They were afraid that they were going to be living in a war zone, and they didn’t want to raise Boris that way. They decided it would be best for them to leave Israel and applied to go to Canada and America so they could have religious freedom in a country that was far from the war that had found them in Israel. They were unsuccessful in getting visas to either country. Then they heard from their friends that if they wanted to go to America they should go to Italy first and apply as refugees from there. They ultimately decided to go to Italy, leaving behind the life that they had built in order to have a chance to come to America.
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Once they reached Italy, Anna and Izia found an organization to help them while they were there. They were in Italy to search for a sponsor that could bring them to America.
Though he couldn’t have a regular job because he didn’t have documentation, Izia did manage to find a little work by going to people’s houses and fixing their TVs for a little bit of money. When they were there they rented a place to live with the little money that they had. However, it wasn’t an apartment, they were renting part of an attic where two other families lived with only dividers as privacy. 6
After a few months of searching Anna and Izia finally decided to go to the one place they hadn’t tried to find a sponsor, the vatican. Once Anna arrived at the Vatican she talked to a volunteer at the church who told her that if they wanted to be sponsored by the Vatican they would have to convert to Catholisims. Anna refused, while the volunteer was impressed at her dedication to Judaism, even when she was desperate for a sponsor, she wouldn’t sponsor them to go to America. Not long after, the Teksler’s got sponsored by the Donner’s who lived in West San Francisco.
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They made it to America in the early months of 1974, and for the first few months in America they were supported by an organization called the Jewish Family and Children’s Services. The organization gave them food and rented them a small apartment. They came to the United States with only $100 in their pocket, no job or place to live, and almost no English. Their sponsors gave them the help and support that they needed to survive. Shortly after they came to America Izia found a job repairing TVs, and Anna found a job as a music teacher. Even though they didn’t speak the language they had an education from when they studied at the university in Ukraine. They slowly built a life here in America where they were finally free to practice Judaism, and where they are safe from war. They managed to raise two kids and instill in them the jewish customs they fought so hard to practice, but also the values that they learned over the course of their journey, the values of hard work and perseverance. Their son Boris did his best to pass those same values on to me and my brother.
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Works Cited Work Cited: Bard, Mitchell. “Yom Kippur War.” My Jewish Learning, www.myjewishlearning.com/article/yom-kippur-war/. Teksler, Anna. Personal interview. 26 April 2020. Teksler, Izia. Personal interview. 1 May 2020. Vollmer, Bastian, and Olena Malynovska. “Ukrainian Migration Research Before and Since 1991.” SpringerLink, Springer, Cham, 5 Nov. 2016, link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-41776-9_2.
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Hi, My name is Toby Teksler and I live in Los Altos with my parents and my older brother. I am a junior at Los Altos high school, but I also attend freestyle academy because I have always had a creative passion that freestyle is helping me explore. When I was younger I would use my creativity on things like building with legos and playing strategy games like chess. However, after joining freestyle and learning how to use many adobe programs I have been playing around with Illustrator. Aside from just school projects I have also been illustrating on my own whenever I have an idea or inspiration for something to create. A lot of the time I draw inspiration from things I enjoy like Marvel, DC, and Star Wars. I also draw inspiration from video games that I enjoy playing, for example Battlefront II which is a Star Wars game. I hope to get into a good college and study a graphic design or product design major so that I can pursue this passion as a career. They say that if you do what you love you never work a day in your life and I hope to one day be working at a job where I can use my inspiration to design. 10