My grandfather’s last will and his grandson’s first one

My maternal grandfather, Dov Ber Levin, whom I remember simply as ‘zeide,’ was a devout Orthodox Jew and passionate Zionist. He was a man of stocky build, with a neatly trimmed white moustache and beard, who, according to my mother, bore a striking resemblance to King George V, a comparison which I guess neither party would have appreciated.

During the course of his travels from Lithuania to South Africa, he acquired a patch of land in what was then Palestine and wrote this into his will as a bequest to his children, laying down the condition that they should only inherit it provided that they settled in the holy land.

Thus the first clause in his will read as follows: “It is my wish and desire that my children shall live in Palestine and I accordingly make the following provisions regarding my Estate in Palestine…..”Living in Palestine” shall mean residence in Palestine for a period of at least three years with the intention of residing there permanently and not for any temporary purpose such as study.”

Succeeding paragraphs were taken up with stipulations as to how the property and assets deriving from it were to be distributed, all of which permanently anchored the beneficiaries to residence in Palestine.

Several monetary bequests were made to Jewish caring, charitable, educational and religious organisations, both in South Africa and Palestine, such as the Jewish Aged Homes in Cape Town and Jerusalem and the Port Elizabeth Chevra Kadisha. However, those of his children who might choose to lead their lives elsewhere in the world than Palestine would inherit nothing.

This powerful document greatly exercised my mother and was mainly responsible for mobilising her Zionist enthusiasm. Accordingly, she pulled up the roots which we had sunk into South African soil and conveyed the family, bag and baggage, to Israel, where new shoots sprang up and flourished. The tale of the will continues today with further migrations and the sinking of deeper roots into Israeli soil, but that is another story.

I was 14 when I discovered my grandfather’s will, hidden among my parents’ papers. What impressed me at the time was not the Palestine stipulation – that was already known to me – but the ideas it gave me for drafting my own unique will, using a recently acquired Remington Junior typewriter, a wonderful machine capable of rendering my scratchy, ink-smudged handwriting into an official looking document.

I therefore opened my document with a clear statement declaring this will to be “the last WILL and TESTAMENT of me, Harold Leon Behr born BEHR” and that “all previous wills, testaments, or testimentary codicils, be declared null and void heretoafter.” I had no idea what a codicil was, testimentary or otherwise, but my fascination with the typewritten format of my text far outweighed its content.

I went on to bequeath “the sum of 18/6, being my sole pecuniary possessions in the world, to the Society for the Prevention od Cruelty to Animals.” The was followed by a bequest of my collection of classic comics to the children’s hospital, my chess set to my school chess club and my clothes to the African Children’s Welfare Centre. The last of these was amplified by the statement, “This means, every garment in my possession, whether movable or immovable, new or old, torn or mended.”

I further stipulated that that “all my books and records and my collection of political cartoons” [culled from various newspapers and pasted into scrapbooks] were “TO BE KEPT IN THE FAMILY OF MINE, AND NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TO BE TAKEN OUT OF THEIR POSSESSION.”

With a magnificent final flourish, I instructed that “all other games, instruments of pleasure, toys and such, are to be given to children of any colour or creed under the age of 12, provided they be worthy of appreciating them.”

And at the end, I invoked only one witness: “God”.

I leave it to analytically minded readers to infer what they will from this brief excursion into adolescent wit and pseudo-mature writing. To bring you up to date on my subsequent peregrinations, after unsuccessfully attempting to live in Israel, I ended up making my home in the United Kingdom, where I now live contentedly.

The items listed as bequests in my juvenile will were actually disposed of as follows: my collection of classic comics was abandoned when I left South Africa, their fate sadly unknown. They would have been worth a few bob today. My chess set never found its way into my school chess club, and my garments, ‘movable or immovable’, were outgrown and either given away or binned.

With the passage of time, my vinyl records were discarded, having been either splintered or scratched into unbearable inaudibility. On the brighter side, I have retained my cartoon scrapbooks and many of my books and I am hoping that they will either be kept “in the family of mine” or find a congenial home in a library somewhere.

I wonder what my zeide would have made of his grandson.