The Source

by James A. Michener

  AMERICAN: Where the hell would you be, Eliav, if we didn’t send the money? If there’s one thing you Israelis had better quit, it’s your flippant charge that the Jews of America are interested only in material things. I drove to Jerusalem to see the rabbis, God forbid, and I passed forests planted by Americans, hospitals paid for by Americans, university buildings bearing American names, rest homes paid for by Jews in Montana, kibbutz buildings paid for by Jews in Massachusetts, and, I might add, archaeological sites being excavated by Americans. If that’s materialism, you’d better hope your citizens develop some, because if you took away the gifts of our selfish, materialistic Americans this would be a shabby land.

  ISRAELI: And if the gifts weren’t tax deductible, you wouldn’t send us a penny.

  AMERICAN: But they are tax deductible because that’s the generous kind of country America is.

  ISRAELI: Your money we appreciate. It’s your people we need.

  AMERICAN: Men like me you won’t get. Life in America is too good. Besides, who would want to live in a land where rabbis have the power they have here?

  ISRAELI: You better make up your mind. On your first visit you complained because our kibbutz had no synagogue. Now you complain because in marriage we follow Jewish law. What is it you American Jews expect of us?

  AMERICAN: I expect Israel to preserve the old customs. I like it when your hotels are kosher. And no buses are allowed to run on Saturdays. It makes me feel like a Jew.

  ISRAELI: And to keep that feeling alive—somewhere else in the world, not in America—you’re willing to send us ninety thousand dollars a year?

  AMERICAN: How do you know what I send?

  ISRAELI: It’s my business to know. For the money I’m grateful. For the men you don’t send, I hold you in contempt.

  AMERICAN: Look here, Eliav!

  ISRAELI: Contempt, I said. If you and Vered have a son, would you send him to Israel?

  AMERICAN: Of course I would. I’d want him to work in a kibbutz some summer. For two weeks.

  ISRAELI: You stupid …

  AMERICAN: You don’t seem to understand the fundamental nature of American-Israel relations.

  ISRAELI: Do you?

  AMERICAN: A damned sight better than you seem to. Israel must exist. As the focus of our religion. The way the Vatican exists for Catholics. But good Catholics don’t emigrate to the Vatican. They stay in Boston, Massachusetts, and Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California, not to mention Sydney, Australia. And they work like hell and build good Catholic lives and send the money rolling back to Rome. You forget that we have more Jews in New York City than you do in all of Israel. If you take the whole United States, we have three times as many as you do. We’re the important part of the Jewish world. And our job is not to come here. Our job is to be the best damned Jews in the world, right in Chicago, and to support you with every expression of good will we can muster … with money, with tourists, with American votes at the United Nations, with arms if necessary. This country is our Vatican, and if I hadn’t seen the Vodzher Rebbe up there in the hills, I’d never give Israel another dime, because he’s what I expect of this country. Piety. Kosher restaurants. Men who keep the spirit of Judaism alive. Do I make myself clear?

  ISRAELI: It would be a good day for Israel if you never returned and if you forgot us completely. Let us find our own level. Let us make peace with history and subside into a minor colony with an excellent university from which our best minds emigrate each year to Buenos Aires, Damascus, Chicago and other backward areas. Let the rabbis brood over the Torah and Talmud, but let Israel as a vital state perish, because as it is it imposes too terrible a burden. Vered can no longer sustain it in its present form, and you refuse to help. You want us to go back to the old days. When my wife’s grandfather reached Tiberias, out of a Jewish population of more than a thousand he found only two or three men at work. The rest waited for the dole from Europe, and when it came they prayed extra hard, insuring sanctity for the Jews who could not live in Israel. Are you proposing to re-establish that system?

  AMERICAN: I’m proposing that Israel remain just as it is. That it be the spiritual center of Judaism. That I accept a responsibility for keeping it alive.

  ISRAELI: For a man who’s made several million dollars, Zodman, you’re incredibly stupid. Don’t you see that for Israel to prosper is far more important to you and Vered, living in Chicago, than it is to Tabari and me, living here? That Israel protects you from the next Nazism? That Israel gives the Jew dignity you’ve never had before. How many Jewish taxi drivers in New York have said to me, as I rode to the United Nations, “You characters over there make me proud I’m a Jew.” You boast of your contributions. You know what I think? I think the state of Israel ought to tax men like you about forty cents on the dollar. To pay for the services we render you.

  AMERICAN: How can you expect to hold the good will of a man like me if you talk like that?

  ISRAELI: I don’t want your good will. I don’t want your condescension.

  AMERICAN: What do you want?

  ISRAELI: Immigration. Your help to stay alive.

  AMERICAN: I’m an American and I owe Israel no allegiance. If you keep talking like this I’ll stop being a Jew.

  ISRAELI: Ah, that’s not for you to decide. Cullinane can stop being an Irishman and no one cares. He can announce one morning, “I’m no longer a Catholic,” and it’s his decision. But if you shout for the next ten years, “I’m not a Jew,” it signifies nothing, for that’s a problem which your neighbor decides. Not you. No Jew can ever cease being a Jew.

  AMERICAN: In America we’re writing new rules.

  ISRAELI: But your new rules will be judged by old standards. In Spain hundreds of thousands of Jews said, “We’re no longer Jews. We’re Spanish Catholics,” but even after two hundred years Spain said, “Sorry, you’re still Jews.” In Germany the followers of Mendelssohn said, “We’re integrated Germans. We’re no longer Jews,” but the Germans said, “Sorry, your grandmother was a Jew, so are you, forever and ever.” But if you seek a classic application of your theory, go to the island of Mallorca. In 1391 a fearful massacre of Jews swept the place, after which those remaining converted to Catholicism. Study what happened to them. Massacred, burned alive, proscribed, jammed into a ghetto, always loyal Catholics but unable to escape being Jews. The story is too terrible to repeat, but remember this. Each Shabbat those one-time Jews used to eat pork on the public streets to prove that they were no longer Jews, but after five hundred years no real Catholic of Mallorca had ever married one of them, for they were still Jews. And it’s our burden to bear this testimony.

  AMERICAN: You try to argue that history never changes. America proves that history does change. What happened in Mallorca bears no relationship to what will happen in America. We are free, and our freedom is assured. The whole constitution of our society confirms that freedom, and I trust it.

  ISRAELI: I do too, Zodman. Until the day when China becomes a major power and humiliates you in some way. Until the day when A.T. and T. drops to forty and you have another economic crisis. Until Senator McCarthy’s successor comes along. Those days will be the test. Some time you should talk with the secretary of this kibbutz. Last year he went back to Russia on a visit. For forty years Russia claimed that it was the new paradise for Jews, and many Jews agreed. You know, when he got to Russia last year not one of his relatives would even speak to him. They looked at him and slammed the door. They paid a trusted friend to visit him in the hotel. At great risk. To tell him, “Go home. Tell no one that you are related to us. And when you get to Israel, put nothing in the paper against Russia or we will disappear and never be heard of again.” Don’t you suppose that if Russia allowed Jews to emigrate, millions would fly to Israel?

  AMERICAN: I must believe in the goodness of my country. I want Israel to be here, for others. I want the Vodzher Rebbe to have his synagogue, for others. And I’ll pay to keep his synagogue going. But my home, my entire future, must
be in America.

  ISRAELI: But your spiritual home will be here.

  AMERICAN: I’m not so sure. The decisions of your rabbis on cases like my divorce will probably drive us further and further apart. We’ll have two Jewries: the spiritual one here, the great effective one in America, and between them little contact.

  ISRAELI: No job is more important for each of us than preserving that contact.

  AMERICAN: Now Vered and I must leave … for the best home the Jews of the world have ever had.

  ISRAELI: And when the trouble strikes, Israel will be waiting.

  This final exchange took place one night as Schwartz lingered at the table to listen, and when the conflicting points of view were neatly tied into gentlemanly packages, as in a formal debate between men dressed in black ties, he startled the group by voicing the hard truth of the matter they had been discussing: “You talk as if the future were going to be like the past. It’s all changed, Zodman. You live in a much different world. So do you, Eliav.”

  “What do you mean?” Zodman asked.

  “Just this. A couple of years ago a lot of synagogues were bombed in Florida. Remember?”

  “What has Florida to do with me?”

  “And it looked as if a strong anti-Semitic wave was beginning. My group here in Israel followed it very closely. And it may shock you to know that if those bombings had continued one more week we were prepared to smuggle armed volunteers into Florida. To train the local Jews. And to shoot it out … for keeps.”

  Zodman gulped. Cullinane leaned forward to ask, “You were going to invade Florida?”

  “Why not? Germany killed six million Jews and the world has never stopped asking, ‘Why didn’t somebody fight back?’ ” He rubbed his forearms and for the first time Cullinane saw that each had been badly broken. “I fought back. So did a lot of others. They’re mostly dead now. But if the good people of Miami, or Quebec, or Bordeaux decide some day to liquidate their Jews, I personally shall appear in that city to fight back again.”

  A shocked hush fell over the room as Zodman and Cullinane tried to apply this challenge to America, but they were unable to do so because Schwartz was speaking: “You won’t fight back, Zodman, because your kind never does. You didn’t in Berlin or Amsterdam or Paris. And you won’t either, Cullinane. You’ll pray and you’ll issue most moving statements and you’ll regret the whole mess, but you won’t raise a finger. And Eliav as a trained seal of the government will announce, The responsible nations of the world really must do something,’ but he won’t have a clue as to what.” With contempt Schwartz looked at the three men and said, “But no one will ever again have to ask, ‘Why didn’t the Jews do something?’ Because my group will be doing just that.”

  He moved to Zodman and said, “So when trouble starts in Chicago and you’re positive it will go away if Jews keep the governor and the chief of police happy, nobody expects you to do anything, Zodman. All we ask is this. If in that time of trouble you see me on the street and you realize that I have come over from Israel to lead the Jewish resistance, don’t betray me. Look the other way and pass on in silence. Because I shall be there to save you.”

  He nodded brusquely to the three men and left the discussion, a hard-disciplined man who cultivated an unemotional view of the contemporary world. He was a man whom Cullinane had grown to respect and actually to like, a tough-minded man who stood ready to take on the whole Christian church, the united Arabs, the diffident Jews of Florida, the vacillating Gentiles and anyone else who wanted to break into the act. It was reassuring to know that such men populated the new Israel, and Cullinane offered a benediction to Schwartz’s self-contained arrogance: “If you can harness his courage, Eliav, you’ll build a great land here.”

  Zodman said, “If I ever meet him walking the streets of Chicago, first thing I’ll do is call a cop,” but Vered said quietly, “You may think differently, Paul, after we’ve talked awhile.”

  The following morning Zodman, the American Jew, took Vered, the sabra, to Cyprus, where they were married by a Church of England minister who made a lucrative business out of uniting couples who were honestly in love but who, under Jewish law, were not permitted to marry. He was a wizened little man with ill-fitting teeth, and when he blessed the Zodmans he said, “Tell all my good Jews not to be disturbed about this monkey business. Years ago my church used to have the same kind of silly laws, which made people run away from England to get married in Gretna Green, but we got over it. Bet you didn’t know Gretna Green was in Scotland.” He made the marriage a deeply tender thing, a true religious ritual, and at the end he asked shyly, “Since there is no one to give away the bride, may I be permitted to kiss the beautiful lady?” He was barely as tall as Vered.

  The unpleasant manner in which Zodman and Vered departed from Makor left a residue of bitterness, and it was Cullinane who observed, “In 70 C.E., after General Vespasian captured Makor, his son Titus captured the symbols of Judaism and hauled them off to Rome. Today Zodman buys them for immediate transshipment to America.” Eliav added glumly, “Maybe he was right. Maybe the leadership of Judaism will pass to American hands.” And the unhappiness of the two men was so depressing that Cullinane was relieved to invent an excuse for running off to Jerusalem. Explaining to no one he banged out of his office, calling over his shoulder, “You fellows better start boxing up the papers,” but Tabari, aware of Eliav’s gloom, thought: It would be a lot better if Cullinane stayed here and let Ilan get away for a few days.

  The thoughtful Arab therefore scouted around for some fresh work to divert Eliav’s attention from Vered, and one morning as he stood on the bedrock of Trench B, under which there could be nothing, he chanced to notice that at the northwestern end of the uncovered rock there was a barely perceptible dip to the west, and taking a small pick he began gingerly to undercut the perpendicular west wall of the trench, finding, as he had suspected, that the falling away of the rock continued in the direction of the wadi. Satisfied on this basic point he sat in the trench for some two hours and did nothing but look at the massive rock; and as he visualized the various settlements that had occupied the tell he was constantly left with a mystery. Where had the original well stood? And he began to direct all his speculation to the earliest settlement—Level XV, about eleven thousand years ago, as man was just beginning to farm—and he came again and again to the conclusion that the original families must have lived somewhere off the face of this gently sloping rock and closer to the fugitive well, wherever it was. His thought processes were not entirely conscious: as a member of the Family of Ur he had a keen sense of land and he somehow felt that the earliest farmers must have sought fields at the bottom of sloping land, so that what rains fell would irrigate their crops and bring down each year fresh sediment to serve as fertilizer for soil which would otherwise be quickly depleted. Near the rock of Makor, where would such land have been?

  He stopped his thinking, made his mind a blank, and tried to conjure up the bedrock of this tell as it had existed, not eleven thousand years ago, but two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand … He began to perspire as his body grew one with the ancient land. His hands grew clammy and he breathed hard. For if he could calculate where this sloping rock had ended he might deduce where the missing well had been, and if he found that, he might project the history of the tell backward sixty or a hundred thousand years. Perhaps Makor would turn out to be one of the great archaeological sites, a classic that scholars would refer to as they now spoke of Carmel, Jericho and Gezer.

  “Eliav!” he called at the end of three hours. The Jew was working at Trench A but a runner summoned him, and soon from the top of the cut he looked down.

  “Find something interesting?” he asked, using the archaeologist’s constant inquiry.

  “Come on down here,” Tabari said, masking the excitement he felt. When Eliav saw the pick work at the base of the west face of the trench he asked what was up, and Tabari said, “Study it. See anything?” The Jew dropped to his knee
s, inspected the unbroken rock closely and said, “No tool marks. No inscriptions.” He drew back and looked at the whole area for some minutes, then dropped to his knees again and studied the level. He rose in great excitement and said, “The whole thing slopes definitely that way.” He paused, looked at Tabari with flashes of excitement in his eyes and said, hesitantly, “And if the slope continued, it could easily be that somewhere out there, outside the tell …” He stopped.

  “Ilan,” the Arab said cautiously, “I think this slope may lead us to the well.”

  “There’s a chance,” Eliav agreed, with even greater caution. “If so, the well would have to be down in the wadi,” and he pointed in exactly the direction that Tabari had deduced.

  Controlling their eagerness the two men climbed down the steep bank to inspect each likely site for a well, but so much detritus had accumulated in that area that any source which might have been there had long since been smothered and now sent its water off through subterranean channels. The men therefore ranged far afield through the bottom of the wadi, searching for some undetected outcropping of water, but none showed. Finally Tabari said, “I think we’ve got to follow the slope of the rock. See where it leads.”

  Eliav agreed, but protocol demanded that they get permission from John Cullinane, who was, after all, the man in charge. Eliav side-stepped this by saying slowly, “I think our responsibility permits us to make a little dig on our own,” and with timbers to shore up the ceiling behind them, the two men started a small boring which led them down past the edge of the basic rock. The timbers were not really needed, for over a period of some twenty thousand years the limestone from the waters that had seeped off the rock had transformed the once-soft earth into breccia, a kind of semi-rock which was easy to cut through but which held its own form, and on the fifth day of this digging Jemail Tabari encountered a small pocket of this breccia and realized that the dig was fundamentally altered.