THERE IS A LOT OF TRIUMPH IN THE STORY OF MENDEK RUBIN’S LIFE. He innovated jewelry clasps that became popular and made him wealthy; he invented the lettuce-washing and packaging machinery that enabled Earthbound Farm to become a successful ready-to-eat organic salads company.
But those are fleeting moments in this story. Years before that, Rubin (no relation) was a Jewish boy in Jaworzno, a coal-mining town in Poland, and then a teenager in the Holocaust who survived three years in seven concentration camps and lost almost everyone and everything he knew.
But the journey for Rubin began well after he settled in the U.S. and succeeded in the jewelry business, and he devoted himself to inner work.
The arc of his life story is told in a new book, Quest for Eternal Sunshine: A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Darkness to Light, co-authored by Rubin’s daughter Myra Goodman, co-founder of Earthbound Farm (now owned by Taylor Farms). Rubin died in 2012 at 87, and left his daughter with a collection of writings – a mix of poems, essays and philosophical treatises.
Over the course of four years, Goodman converted the manuscript into her father’s story, relying on his papers and extensive research, both historical and personal. He didn’t talk about the past, so she turned to other sources to complete the narrative. Some of that came in videotaped interviews Goodman’s sister recorded about 30 years ago. In one case, while she was working on the book, Goodman stumbled across an old cassette tape in her son’s childhood bedroom, and heard her father’s voice, recorded over music for a school project. “He said, ‘OK, you can interview me, but don’t ask me about Auschwitz.’”
Surviving, Rubin wrote, was thanks in part to luck and in part to the same kind of ingenuity that appeared later in his life – things like learning where to stand strategically in the food line, how to wrap a thin blanket for maximum warmth, cooking raw potatoes while his concentration camp job was shoveling coal into a furnace.
“There were many times that I came close to dying, but I got lucky,” the book reads. “The teenage boy I had once been was quickly transformed into a survival machine.”
After the war ended, Rubin returned to a decimated hometown, a city of 24,000 that was obliterated. At 21, with the help of a cousin who’d immigrated just before the war began, Rubin and his one surviving sister boarded the Marine Perch for a 10-day voyage to New York.
Four years later, in 1950, he was drafted into the Army during the Korean War, then returned to New York and went into the jewelry business with his cousin. He met his wife, Edith, and they were quickly married and had two daughters – an American Dream success story in every way.
But success aside, Rubin grappled with a seemingly futile search for happiness. He and Edith both grappled with depression. He tried therapy, he tried hypnosis. Eventually he landed on The Pathwork, known as “The Path,” and for seven years invested himself and his family fully in the communal experience, including living onsite, a full immersion. His daughter, Goodman, has since done a lot of her own inner work, including 18 years as a student of Zen.
The book is part Holocaust survival story, part self-discovery journey about The Path and the search for happiness, part memoir. Goodman – who has three cookbook credits to her name – decided to stop worrying about how to classify it. She’s spoken about it at her Brown Bag Zen group, and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. plans to stock it in the bookstore.
“I started realizing I was being overcautious about the woowoo and the Jewish stuff,” Goodman says. “I just had to trust that people will get what they get out of it.”
The book covers a lot of ground, from Rubin’s childhood to the Holocaust to the post-war years in America and his retirement to Carmel Valley, where his daughter and son-in-law started Earthbound Farm – and throughout, a lot of the work he did processing his childhood and trauma.
Goodman spoke to the Weekly on the eve of publication, just as the pandemic was coming close to home and she had to cancel a book talk planned in Carmel.
Weekly: How close is the book to what your father wrote and how much of it is embellished or written by you?
Goodman: His manuscript was kind of an assortment of a lot of different pieces. It brought me back in time and place – it’s astounding, especially since he was dyslexic and English was his fourth language.
He wrote a lot of philosophy and he wanted to sound scientific and authoritative, as if he was giving a lecture. And that wasn’t his personality, his personality was very gentle.
I think my dad was really a philosopher, but not everyone wants to sit and read philosophy textbooks. It was too much, and ultimately I had to weave it into his life story.
About half the book came from his writings; the other came from my research, written in his first-person voice.
What’s it like to write in your dad’s voice?
I almost had to inhabit him and feel his energy and how he would say it and how he would view it. That’s what’s been incredible. Years after my father died – and he had Alzheimer’s for 10 years before he died – I feel so close to him. That’s been a magical thing. I really felt like my dad was part of this process.
What was surprising to you in researching him?
Almost everything, honestly. I felt like I was doing a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. It felt like a magical experience. There would be a fact that I would find and just thought was so cool and needed to find a place for it.
We’re talking as coronavirus is changing society and many people are feeling isolated. Are there any parallels to his story?
One of the things about trauma is not being able to act, feeling frozen. So much of trauma is helplessness to affect your situation. I think [the pandemic] could be traumatic for a lot of people, especially old people who can’t leave their homes.
One thing I think about in the Holocaust is how few people stood up and helped. Say there was someone who was sick, and you could bring them into your house. Or [during the Holocaust], harboring a Jew: Would I do it for someone I didn’t know?
You talked a little bit about intergenerational trauma, and being the child of two Holocaust survivors. How does their suffering from 75 years ago manifest for you?
I didn’t know their story because they didn’t talk about it. But my mom was very depressed, she lived in her bed. I always felt like it was my job to make my mom happy.
The holocaust was my “trauma bar” – nothing that was happening with me could count. Like, am I supposed to be upset because my friend didn’t invite me over?
How do you deal with that?
What I have learned is – and this is part of my process now, with coronavirus – is when fear comes up, feel the feelings. Don’t try to shut it down. The more you push it away, the stronger it gets. My dad wrote, “When I tried to flee from fear, I feared my fear more than anything else.”
My whole life, I’ve been trying to talk myself out of the things that scare me, and I never could. Say my son, after he just started driving, was late; I could always come up with a scenario in my mind, and life is dangerous.
When you realize that you are able to feel fear and feel grief and feel pain and survive it, there is a strength, because there’s not this terror of these things happening that are going to make you feel that way. I realized when you are trying to run away, you are just living in terror. Instead you can feel these waves, and then they pass, and then – I’m still here.
How do you think your father would weigh in on the current moment?
“Now is a good time to be cheerful; there is never a good time to be fearful.” This is one of his main things [from his poem, “Now is a Good Time”].
We have freedom of choice about what thoughts we think. This was one thing that was essential about his philosophy – really just the importance of thinking positive thoughts. Why don’t we think thoughts that make us feel good? If you have a sense of calm and kindness and compassion the people around you will pick up that energy.
Selections from Quest for Eternal Sunshine: A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Darkness to Light; excerpted and adapted with permission
As children in Poland, we were told that just before we were born, our guardian angels snapped their fingers under our noses so that we would forget everything we had ever known. This is how we forgot about love. The reason for our being here on earth is to rediscover love all over again.
•••
I come from a little town in Poland called Jaworzno, which was made up of two very different cultures given to mutual misunderstanding and distrust. Deeply immersed in our religion and way of life, we Jews were the minority. We stood apart from the Christian population not just in our belief system and world outlook but also in the way we dressed, our language, and our history.
The Poles viewed us as intruders with alien customs, and they treated us with suspicion and contempt. I felt this animosity strongly as a child, and it caused me much grief. It wasn’t uncommon for Polish children to scream insults and throw rocks at me on my way to school.
Jaworzno was a coal-mining town, and you could find coal under the earth anywhere you dug. Most of the Jews in Jaworzno were merchants, while most of the Christians worked hard in one of the five coal mines near town. Mining was hard and dangerous. Mortality rates were high, and every few months, someone was killed.
My family lives right in the middle of the market square, so the long funeral processions always passed by our home on their way to the church. Thousands of mourners dressed in black, accompanied by martial music, followed coffins drawn by horse and buggy.
Jaworzno was a somber place.
•••
[1942] One day, while I was working at the coal mine, a commotion nearby caught my attention. A few hundred yards from where I was standing, I saw some workers huddled together, agitated. Their eyes were directed toward the highway just outside the confines of the mine.
I stopped loading coal into a railroad car and stood sideways between the cars to see what was going on. A group of two hundred Jewish men and women of all ages were walking on the open highway leading to the next town. Gazing at the scene in front of me, I was overwhelmed with dread.
The people were walking slowly, in total silence, escorted by German soldiers carrying machine guns. Among the many walkers were the very old and the very young. Infants were being carried in their mothers’ arms. Little boys and girls were staying close to their parents. One man was limping and could only walk with a cane.
I watched from the rear since they had already passed by. If it had been five or ten minutes earlier, I would have seen their faces. I had been working right next to the fence, but hadn’t known to look. Now I was so petrified I couldn’t move.
My worst fears were coming to pass. For months, we’d been hearing disturbing news about the Nazis targeting one city after another for evacuation of all the Jewish inhabitants. We lived in dread, not knowing when our turn would come.
Jews were being rounded up and deported by trainloads. None of us knew to what destination, but there were all kinds of rumors. The Germans managed to keep the real destination a secret. Perhaps no one really wanted to find out. In my heart, though, I knew their destination was death. Perhaps everyone knew, but we never talked about it.
I later learned that these Jews had been on their way to Auschwitz. It was only fifteen miles away, but at the time, we had no idea it existed, or that the systematic extermination of all the Jewish people in Poland had begun.
•••
[1945] On our way to work in the morning, we walked in the opposite direction of the retreating German army. In the evenings, on our way back to the camp, we walked in the same direction, side by side.
The German army had once loomed ten feet tall in my imagination – dragon-like creatures capable of destroying the world. Ever since they’d invaded my hometown, I hadn’t dared to look at their faces. But now, on those morning walks, I couldn’t help but make eye contact with the soldiers walking toward me.
In the beginning, it felt like I was watching people from another planet – an alien force determined to destroy me and my people. Looking directly at my executioners was like staring hell right in the face. Yet in spite of my nervousness, my eyes remained glued to their faces. I couldn’t help myself. When they looked at me, I quickly glanced away. I needed to be cautious and I was still afraid.
After a while, my fears subsided a little and I began to scrutinize the soldiers as if seeing them for the first time. I watched their faces and observed their manners – the way they walked and talked, how they smoked their cigarettes, the kind of weapons and ammunition they carried. I was overwhelmed with curiosity.
After several days, as my fear continued to lessen, in my mind I dared them to make eye contact with me. Although this scared me, I began to notice that the German soldiers were human beings after all. They had eyes, mouths, hands, and feet. They walked and talked like everyone else. They might even have feelings like other people, I thought, though that was a revelation I found hard to believe.
Some were my age, with kind and sensitive eyes. It actually seemed possible that they could be nice. Perhaps, in another situation, we could have been friends. As I examined them, I stopped seeing them as monsters, and wondered why that was the case. As my fear and hatred began to lighten, I felt guilty. I thought I was betraying my people. This, in turn, made me feel sad and lonely, but I didn’t know why.
Even though I had witnessed unspeakable brutality, something in me did not want to believe that it was true. There was part of me that found it too painful to accept the cruelty and savagery of the human race. How could these men in front of me – even those who seemed kind – kill so easily?
Perhaps, I mused, I am no different than these German soldiers. Perhaps we are all the same. Would I behave like them if I were in their shoes?
These are questions I still ask myself.
Eventually, as I studied the soldiers on those walks, I began breathing easier. A heavy weight was lifted from my shoulders. The German army had troubles of their own now, so I knew they were less likely to harm me. Yet I could not fully rejoice. I was still under guard and did not know what the future would bring.
•••
I believe we are all children of a benevolent cosmos, and at the core of our being, each one of us is the divine individualized. Everything is made of energy; nothing is isolated. We are all connected by love, and our heart as our center of gravity is always our trust and most helpful guide.
Happiness is our birthright, freely given to us all as an act of grace. We don’t have to do anything to deserve it. Like the sun, mountains, and warm summer rains, happiness belongs to everyone.