Gail Hareven - The Confessions of Noa Weber

“Didn’t they let him know that you’ve given birth?”

“I think that … they must have probably informed him already. But he’s serving in Sinai, in some hole in Sinai, so maybe it’s taking them a long time. Yes, of course, it must be taking time, but he’ll definitely come soon, today or tomorrow.”

“Your husband, my dear, is entitled to forty-eight hours leave,” she informed me with a hint of rebuke in her voice, “even the army understands how important his presence is to you now. And what about your parents? What about your family and his? Where are they in all this?”

“My husband is a new immigrant,” I replied, and what next? Should I tell her that my parents were abroad? Someone here in the hospital staff might recognize me. Maybe they already had. The whole world knew my parents. They would catch me out in a lie and then they would definitely take my baby away from me. Or send me to the psychiatric ward. Alek didn’t come, he didn’t come, but I wanted to go home to Alek. It was only when she said the words “about to be discharged” that I understood that this was indeed what I wanted. And now this was the only thing I wanted: to get out of here, out of this nightmare, to go home, to see Alek, to be with Alek, when everything would settle down and I would be okay. “My parents were very unhappy about my marriage,” I improvised. “They thought I was too young to marry, they wanted us to wait, and for me to go to the army first. The truth is that since the marriage they’ve more or less broken off relations with me.” The ring of truth in these words finally convinced the social worker. “Things change when a baby is born,” she said, “I’ve seen it again and again. Perhaps you should try to make contact with your parents in spite of everything. I’m not promising you that it will succeed, nobody can make any promises, but maybe you’ll be surprised.” I promised her I would think about it, and she gave me a card with her room number and phone extension. She said that she would be in her office all the next morning, perhaps before I left I would like to come up with the baby and say goodbye, and I could phone her from home as well, if I thought she could be of any help. I was about to relax with the thought that the conversation was over, but Deborah Rubin was not yet satisfied. “And when you get home, who will be with you until your husband returns? Who is there to help you? Who’s getting everything ready for the baby? A woman who’s just given birth shouldn’t be by herself, certainly not a sweet young girl like you.” To this I hastily replied that we had tons of friends, my husband and I, they simply didn’t know that I’d had the baby because there was nobody to let them know, but as soon as they knew — they would do whatever needed to be done, that is to say, my husband would definitely do whatever needed to be done first, but they would do it too afterwards.

“By the way, my child, you haven’t told me yet what you’re going to call the baby. Have you already decided on a name?” the social worker asked as she stood up to go.

“A name … of course …,” I paused for a moment, “she has a name. Hagar. Her name is Hagar.”

Until that moment not only had I not chosen a name, I hadn’t even thought properly about names, only that at some stage I would have to solve this problem too.

I don’t know where the name came from, but from the moment I said Hagar, it was clear to me that this was her name, as if she had come into the world with it. My daughter Hagar. Baby Hagar.

NAMES

Since I was legally married, she was registered at the Ministry of Interior as Hagar Ginsberg, daughter of Alexander and Noa Ginsberg.

It was only when I went to register her, when she was already almost a year old, that I discovered that the Ministry of Interior was kept up to date by the Rabbinate, and that without my knowledge they had changed my name from Weber to Ginsberg, which meant that as far as the state was concerned I had been Ginsberg now for over a year and a half without anyone taking the trouble to inform me. When the situation became clear to me, I didn’t even try to find out whether I could change it. On my first ID card, which I had received just before I got married, my name was given as Weber, and I simply continued to sign my name and introduce myself as Noa Weber. The struggle for the right of married women to keep their maiden names was unheard of then, I had no ideological reasons against taking my husband’s name, but because it was “only a fictitious marriage” it had never occurred to me to use his name.

Whenever the subject of the name came up, for example before the elections in December ’73, when my mother noticed that the voter’s notification they sent me was addressed to “Noa Ginsberg,” it led automatically to talk of divorce—“Really, Noaleh, isn’t it about time you resolved the matter and asked him for a divorce?”—I would say, “I haven’t got the strength to take care of it now,” and “I’m in no shape to make contact with him now,” and it was only at the end of the seventies, when I was already working for the human rights fund, that I adopted the avant-garde position: I don’t care what my name is at the Ministry of Interior, and I’m not interested in their opinion regarding my marital status. As long as there’s no separation between state and religion in Israel, we should take no notice of their registrations, and the more anarchy we create the better. My name is Noa Weber, I’m as single as I ever was, and I have no intention of entering into negotiations with some official in order for him to confirm my true identity.

In 1984 things became a little more complicated, after my bag was stolen with my ID card inside it. The new ID they issued me was in the name of Noa Ginsberg, and the same went for the passport I obtained at the end of the eighties. As a result, to this day I have to explain myself when I sign checks — the name printed in my checkbook is Noa Weber — but all my plane tickets are in the name of Ginsberg, and Ginsberg is my name at airline check-ins.

The fact is that at the end of the eighties I could have registered myself again as Weber, without requiring a divorce or waging a legal battle — other women had already won the battle — and the other fact is that I failed to do so.

Openly I mock the “bureaucratic joke” of my name, and say that “I haven’t got the strength for the Ministry of Interior,” but what I haven’t told a soul is that because of this “bureaucratic joke” that I am ostensibly cultivating for anarchist reasons, I have wasted more than a little time on solving problems with the Income Tax and National Insurance authorities. My “bureaucratic name” is like a secret, illicit thrill, a thrill I feel whenever I get official mail from the government.

My daughter appears like me as Weber. At the daycare I registered her as Weber, friends and neighbors have known her as Weber since the day she was born, and the questions began only when she entered the education system, where she appeared under the name registered at the Ministry of Interior. In ’91, when she turned eighteen, she asked to be registered under the name of Weber on her ID card, and to both of our surprise, her request was granted after filling in a single standard form.

“I belong to you more than to Alek. I even belong to Granny and Grandpa more than to him,” she kept on explaining, as if anyone needed an explanation. During that period she was preoccupied by thoughts of Mark and Daniel, the half-brothers she didn’t know, once every few years she would begin to brood about them, and it seemed to me that adopting my name was an act intended to put an end to this futile preoccupation. “I even belong to Granny and Grandpa more than him.…” But I belong in secret to Alek. And in the secret of the bureaucratic joke I am still called by his name.