25/5/98

Ambassador Gubby

If you had tea with the queen, what would you chat about?
    Mothers.
    “I can't talk to her about horses,” Mimi Avner pondered, moments before her one-on-one with Elizabeth II. “And I did not think she'd be interested to hear about my grandchildren.”        
    Noting that their mothers were about the same age, “I said something like 'That was an incredible generation, wasn't it?' She lit up. She's obviously very fond of her mother. She said, 'I think we're spoiled; we're used to cars from door to door, and they're of the horse-and-carriage era.'
    “And my brother later laughed and said, 'Yeah, can you see our mother, in the East End of London, in a horse and carriage?’ ''
    Mimi and Yehuda Avner are from humble stock -- their parents entered England as refugees -- but found themselves at the most dizzying of heights as representatives of the Jewish state in the Court of St. James.
    Yehuda returned to his homeland as Israeli ambassador in 1983, assuming the post from Shlomo Argov, who was shot by Palestinians a year earlier.
    Yehuda's 40 years in the Foreign Ministry kept him at the periphery of Israeli history. He worked closely with Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin and
Menahem Begin; he even met president Chaim Weizmann in 1949, when Yehuda was a pioneer on Kibbutz Lavi.
    The Avners say they're just regular folks, but it was hard not to get a bit giddy when Yehuda presented his ambassadorial credentials -- pompfully paraded at Buckingham Palace in open carriage, with white horses, timed to the changing of the guards -- with his six siblings coming from Manchester to watch their little brother.
    Despite his exalted status, for many in Manchester he was still the Haffner kid.
    “People knew me as Gubby.” He chuckles. “Sometimes they would cut me down to size: I would be making a pompous speech somewhere, and somebody would get up at question time and instead of calling me 'Mr. Ambassador,' they would call me Gubby.''
    One time, the local kid who made good found himself right back where he started. “I was the guest of the chief constable of Manchester, and he's taking me to visit the horse training school, and the dog training school, and lunch with the senior officers, and then on the program I see: 'Tour of Jewish Manchester.' I didn't say a word! And we went on this tour of the streets where I was brought up, and he's explaining to me about the evolution of Jewish Manchester, and we're driving along, and I see my sister, and I see a cousin, and I'm waving to them, and the chief constable says, ‘I see you know a few people here.’ ”
Right off the bat, Yehuda found his diplomatic skills tested. The queen greeted him with the words: “I do believe this is the first time I've ever received credentials from a foreign ambassador born in this country.” Thinking fast for the appropriate response, Yehuda said: “Though I was born in this country, your majesty, I was given birth in Jerusalem.”
Being in the foreign service had its moments, as you can imagine, but being an Orthodox ambassador had its complications. It didn't hurt that the Avners are blessed with a sense of humor.
    At the beginning of a working lunch for Menachem Begin at 10 Downing Street, a huge ceremonial challa was placed behind Yehuda -- despite it being a regular weekday. Begin leaned over to him and whispered, “Yehuda. Mach hamoytzi” (telling him, in Yiddish, to say the blessing on the bread).
    “The devil got into me, I have no other words for it. I decided I was going to come out with all guns blazing. I became at that moment -- a Reform American rabbi.” Yehuda laughs fiendishly. “And I was thinking to myself, I've gotcha, the lot of ya!
    “I'm an old kibbutznik, so the only way I know how to cut a challa is down the middle and chop it up quickly. So I did that, and I had these chunks of challa, and now I didn't know what to do with them.
    “So I get up and ceremoniously go to Thatcher, and I say, 'Madam Prime Minister, wilt thou break bread with me?' She thought it was a delightful custom.”
    At the end of a state visit by Shimon Peres, the Israelis were hosted at a more informal lunch. Mimi recalls the sensitivity of Princess Diana. “She said, 'I took a note of every item of food you'd been eating this past week, and whilst I didn't bring in a rabbi to make my kitchen kosher, I promise you that everything I'm serving will be perfectly acceptable to you.''
    At one point, Diana summoned Prince William, the five-year-old future king, who asked Mimi to “teach me a word in your language.”
    “I taught him to say 'Shalom.' At that moment I thought of my zaideh. My zaideh came to England in 1901, he was such a patriot. For him to have been able to see me sitting like that...”
    Mimi made her mark again, at an annual diplomatic ball that happened to take place at a most sensitive time, during the Lebanon War. “Directly opposite me was the Saudi Arabian. When the waiter approached him I noticed he looked at his watch and he said 'No thank you.'
    “Suddenly I realized we were in the middle of Ramadan, and it was not yet dark (at which time he could start to eat). So I took a deep breath -- and this is where the women come in, we unpaid wives who are totally unrecognized for the hard work we do! Obviously we were not on speaking terms, and the men wouldn't have been able to do this; I said 'Could I suggest you ask the waiter to bring you some melon, it's a very good thing to break a fast on.' And he looked stunned and he said, 'Thank you, thank you madam.' He called the waiter back, and I felt good, I'd made my little contribution.
    “Then I wondered what he was going to eat for the main course, and to my utter consternation, he chose the meat. If he's so religious that he keeps Ramadan, that means he'll only eat hallal (ritually slaughtered meat). I was very curious. The lady-in-waiting who was in charge of me, who taught me how to curtsy and go forward and backward, and not to worry about my creaking knees, I told her this story a day or two later, and she laughed. She said, ‘My dear Mimi, remember, there is only one Israel. Most Israelis don’t even observe kosher, am I correct? We have 40 Moslem countries, so naturally when we have a state occasion, all our meat is hallal.’ It reduced me to size!”
She says that “Kosher caterers always give twice or three times as much as what everyone else gets; it's obvious you're eating different food.”
Yehuda snickers. “And we've been on state occasions where they've come along with a box. A box of food, a bloody box!” he howls in mock horror.
One time, in Washington, during a dinner president Ford threw for Rabin, everybody had been served their meal of roast duck, but Yehuda's plate remained empty. Finally, the butler stepped forward and “He puts in front of me a plate. And on the plate is a wad of lettuce about two inches thick. On top of that, a mound of exotic chopped fruits. On top of that a blob of cottage cheese. On top of that a swish of whipped cream. And everybody is looking at it.
“And Gerry Ford leans over to Rabin, whispers in his ear, Rabin whispers something back, whereupon president Ford calls over to me, Happy Birthday! And everybody applauds and sings Happy Birthday.
“I was bamboozled, and later I said to Rabin, 'Why did you say it was my birthday?' And he said, in his typical Rabin gruffness, 'What else was I going to tell them?’ ''
Yehuda remembers one awful moment when diplomacy yielded to personal conscience.
    “We received an invitation to the state banquet at Buckingham Palace, for the state visit of German president von Weizsaecker. When he toasted the Queen, his national anthem was played. “Deutschland Uber Alles.” I could not stand up. I  couldn't. I didn't. I was... paralyzed.
    “Afterward I went up to von Weizsaecker, I felt this imperative, and I said, 'Your Excellency, I owe you an apology.' He says 'Why?' and I realized he hadn't seen. I said, 'I'm the ambassador of Israel, and when your anthem was played I did not rise.' He took me by the hand and said, 'I understand.’ 
    “Thatcher, who was a yard away, she cups my elbow and says, 'Yehuda, yes, I do think it's appropriate that you apoligize to the president.' ”
At times, it was “terribly lonely” being an Orthodox Jew in the service. “I had a problem about going to shul. I was subject to the security of Scotland Yard wherever I went. I was not supposed to walk because then you're the most exposed. The chief of security said, 'OK, go to synagogue, but drive.' And I told him, 'If I don't walk to the synagogue on Shabbat, the enemy will have won.'
“So I made this deal with him: I won't go on Friday night, but Shabbat morning I'm going to St. John's Woods Synagogue.”
For most Jews, this 10-minute walk would be a nice, leisurely, peaceful stroll. But not for the ambassador.
“There would be two police motorcyclists circling around me. An armored vehicle alongside me. A backup. Six Scotland Yard men all around, in bulletproof vests.”
But protection against which enemy?
Yehuda relishes telling this one.
“I wanted to attend a celebration in Stamford Hill, in the heart of the haredi community. Stamford Hill is known to have quite an [anti-Zionist] Satmar group. Driving there, I had a car in front, a car behind, motorcyclists -- more than usual. So I said, 'What's going on here?'
“And the sergeant in charge says, 'Ambassador, we've increased security because we're going into a neighborhood in which there is a sect hostile to your country.''