By Alex Gordon, Ph.D
HAIFA, Israel — When I was a university student, I had to take an exam on the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The students were afraid of not only the exam but also the lecturer administering the test — a student-hater, and a tough, unpleasant man who demanded that I memorize the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism.
A piquant detail for me was that he was a known antisemite, and I was the only Jew in the class. I was not afraid of the exam, since I knew by heart almost all the necessary works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
I was getting ready to take the exam with an inner challenge to the antisemitic lecturer: give out any quote from the works of his idols. I decided to answer first, so that I could get rid of the exam as quickly as possible, and in the evening, I could light Hanukkah candles with my friends. I entered the exam room and took a ticket from the table. When the lecturer saw me, his perpetually unhappy and frowning face turned petrified. I read in his eyes the sentiment, “Wait, I’ll show you!” I sat down at my desk and looked at the ticket. For each of the three questions I had a passage from a classic. There was no point in getting ready. I raised my hand. The lecturer was clearly surprised, but quickly mastered himself and nodded coldly at me, allowing me to answer.
I began reciting a large passage from Marx in response to the first question. After that, I “pulled out” a piece from Engels in the second question. When I began quoting Lenin in the third question, our gazes met. The lecturer was smiling at me radiantly. I realized that he was enjoying my answer and that I had turned him from an enemy into an ally. The exam was coming to a successful conclusion. I was already imagining getting rid of him, and meeting up with friends in the evening, when we would light candles to celebrate the Hanukkah miracle.
But suddenly my speech was interrupted by an angry lecturer shouting, “What are you saying?” I struggled to return from my fantasies to the mechanically repeated text. “It’s not me talking, it’s Comrade Lenin,” I remarked.
“I know where you are quoting from,” said the lecturer, red with anger. “What does Comrade Lenin write about the world revolution, about the proletariat lighting the fire of the world revolution?”
The lecturer continued, “You said that the proletariat would light the candles of world revolution. Candles are lit in churches, in synagogues. I wanted to give you an ‘A’, but you barely got a ‘B.’ You’re steeped in religious prejudice. You disappoint me. There are no miracles.”
I walked out of the exam room, ignoring a crowded room of my fellow students who were eager for more details surrounding this incident, and said loudly, “A miracle just happened today.”
No one understood anything.
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Alex Gordon is a native of Kiev, Ukraine, and graduate of the Kiev State University and the Technion in Haifa (Doctor of Science, 1984). He immigrated to Israel in 1979. He is a Full Professor (Emeritus) of Physics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education. He is the author of eight books and about 500 articles in print and online, and has been published in 62 journals in 14 countries in Russian, Hebrew, English, and German.