Birthright

by Alan Gold

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  Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

  — Christopher Hitchens

  The Middle East Crisis Areas, 1933–1948

  PART ONE

  Kibbutz Beit Yitzhak, Northern Palestine

  1931

  FOUR-YEAR-OLD SHALMAN ETZION ran as fast as his little legs could carry him and hurled himself into the void as the ground disappeared beneath him. He plummeted like a diving bird, arms and legs akimbo, screaming as he flew through the air. He felt the air hurtling past as he plunged over the edge of the sand dune, exhilarating in the heat of the sun and the acrid perfume of salt and sea spray. Neither his mother nor his father, seated nearby, turned as Shalman shrieked into the wind.

  His body landed with a thud and nearly disappeared into the soft white powder as he slid with the sand, gliding down to the bottom where his parents, dressed only in their swimsuits, were sitting on a blanket eating hummus, t’china, and pita bread.

  “Shalman,” said his mother, Devorah, turning when she heard him stand up and laugh, “come eat. You’ll hurt yourself one day. Come, bubbeleh. Have some food.”

  The boy brushed the sand off his body. Ari, his father, continued to read his copy of the Palestine News but said softly to his wife, “Devorah, leave the kid alone. He’s having a good time. He’ll eat when he’s ready.”

  Shalman was ready. Spending all of Saturday at the beach was the greatest fun in the entire world, and even though his week was filled with learning to read and write and singing songs and playing with his brothers and sisters on the kibbutz, there was nothing he loved more than when he had his abba and imma to himself. Sometimes the family came to the beach for a picnic with other families from the kibbutz, and then the fun would be multiplied as all the kids ran wild across the sand. But there was something special on a Shabbat morning when his abba was given permission by the kibbutz director to borrow the organization’s truck and drive his family to a beach.

  And this beach, some thirty miles south of Haifa, was the one he enjoyed the most. There were beaches that his kibbutz faced, beaches where the cultivated land and the orange and grapefruit groves gave way to the sand and then to the sea. But this beach, a half-hour drive away from his kibbutz, had towering dunes that curved so that when large waves thundered down on the sand, they sent up white clouds of spray and salt. It was incredibly exciting.

  Shalman, hair tousled and full of sand, walked to the blanket and sat cross-legged as his mother put a plate of the pastes and bread in front of him. He turned up his nose, which his father noticed. He knew there was chicken and coleslaw and didn’t want to waste his time eating this grown-up food.

  “Stop it, Shalman. Do you know how lucky you are to have good food? Little boys and girls in Europe are starving. You should eat everything and be grateful.”

  “Why can’t they come here, Abba?”

  “Bubbeleh, it’s easy for people like you and Mummy and me to travel—we just get into the kibbutz’s truck and drive. But it’s not so easy for others. The British have stopped many of our people from coming here, and many have died trying.”

  Only a few years had passed since Jews in Palestine were barred access to the temple in Jerusalem amid riots and violent bloodshed between them and their Arab neighbors. This had prompted the British, who administered the land of Palestine under the mandate, to crack down and restrict Jewish migration.

  Devorah interrupted. “For God’s sake, Ari; he’s a child. Don’t tell him such things.”

  “No!” said Shalman. “Tell me now, Abba. Tell me. I hate the British. I want to kill the British. And the Arabs.”

  Devorah was shocked. “Don’t say such horrible things! You mustn’t talk about killing and murder.” She looked at her husband. “Where does he learn these things?”

  Ari shrugged. “It’s a kibbutz. Kids talk. They repeat what they’ve heard their parents say. But what am I supposed to tell him? The British and the Arabs are our best friends?”

  “He doesn’t have to learn hatred while he’s a child. He can be different from us,” Devorah replied.

  “It’s important that he knows his birthright!”

  “He’ll learn soon enough. When this is our country, then—” A sudden gust of wind carried her words away.

  But Ari’s attention was drawn to something in the distance. His expression hardened and his mood changed, which little Shalman noticed.

  Ari had heard the noise of a vehicle. “Quiet!” he ordered. Devorah and Shalman looked at him in concern as he stood and scrambled up the dune. The road from Haifa to Tel Aviv was fairly busy, but there were very few cars or vehicles that turned off on the long side road that led to the beaches. And these beaches were too far from villages or other centers of population to be visited by many people.

  Ari popped his head up just above the line of the dune so he could see the kibbutz truck he’d borrowed. It no longer stood alone; parked beside it was a military vehicle carrying four British soldiers.

  With a sinking heart, Ari watched them walk toward the beach, two carrying their .303s and one carrying a new Bren gun. The fourth soldier, a sergeant, carried a side revolver.

  Ari didn’t know what to do. He could climb up over the dune and greet them, and dressed in a swimsuit, he would appear patently unarmed. To better protect his family, he crawled back down to where Shalman and Devorah waited. “The British. A four-man patrol. Armed. Just sit and eat like everything is normal.”

  “Everything is normal, Ari. We’re just having a picnic.” But her words were more for Shalman than her husband.

  Shalman turned toward the dune, but Devorah said urgently, “Bubbeleh, just look this way, toward the sea. Keep your eyes on Abba and Imma.”

  Ari said loudly in English, and somewhat too theatrically, “Well, I see that you’re both eating the kibbutz food. It’s really good, isn’t it?”

  Devorah glared at him. “Stop pretending, idiot. You’re no actor. You sound like a meshuggeneh.”

  The four soldiers, weapons ready, appeared at the top of the dune. Ari glanced up and smiled and nodded. “Good morning, gentlemen.”

  The soldiers didn’t return the greeting. Instead, the sergeant pointed to the basket and said loudly, “You. Missus. Open the basket very slowly and show us what’s inside. Very bloody slowly.” As she moved to follow his order, one soldier leveled his .303 from the hip, pointing it directly at Devorah, fearful that she might draw a weapon. In Palestine, anything was possible.

  Devorah moved to open the basket, lifted it, and showed it to the soldiers. Then she put it back on the blanket and slowly took everything out: first the chicken, then some salad, then two bottles of water. When she’d done so, she turned it upside down to prove that there was nothing else inside.

  The sergeant nodded. “What are you doing here? Why so far from town? Where are you from?”

  “We’re from Kibbutz Beit Yitzhak, about ten miles south. It’s our day of rest, so I’m here with my wife and son, having a picnic.”

  One of the other soldiers, standing next to the sergeant, whispered into his ear. The sergeant nodded. “My corporal’s going to come down and make sure you’re not hiding weapons under your blanket. Don’t make any moves. Understand?”

  The younger man descended the dune, slipping on the sandy surface, and walked over to the family. He pointed his .303 at them. “Move off the blanket. Now!”

  S
halman involuntarily let out a whimper, the quiet of the beach seizing him with uncertain fear. But the Tommy was unmoved and continued to point his rifle at them. Ari picked up Shalman, and they moved onto the sand. The corporal poked the blanket with the barrel of his gun, but it was obvious that nothing was hidden beneath. He looked up and nodded to his sergeant. The other three men descended the dune, and the sergeant smiled at Ari and his wife.

  “Sorry, mate, but you Jews are causing us no bleedin’ end of problems these days. You never bloody know who’s going to stab you in the back at the moment.”

  Silently, under her breath, her face turned away from them toward the sea, Devorah whispered to herself, “Nobody trusts anyone anymore . . .”

  Moscow, USSR

  1931

  LITTLE JUDITA LUDMILLA hid beneath the table, but try as she might, she couldn’t stop herself from crying. While her older brother and sister were hiding under the sheets of the single bed the children shared, the two-year-old tried to block out her father’s stentorian voice rebounding off the walls of their tiny apartment. It was the third time this week that Abel Abramovich was shouting at his wife and three children. His thundering voice was punctuated by the sounds of his fist pounding on the table and furniture being kicked over as he stumbled drunkenly across the room.

  The little girl, perpetually hungry, limp, ragged, and exhausted, squeezed her eyes shut to block out the sight of her father’s teetering body. She was frightened that he would do to her what he did to her mother. Sometimes the marks on her mother’s face and shoulders didn’t disappear for a week. Her mother would make excuses to stay in the house then, but when she was older, Judita would understand that her mother was ashamed.

  Abel Abramovich reeked of vodka, there were borscht stains on his work clothes, and he was covered in concrete dust from his construction site. From under the table Judita could hear her mother, Ekaterina, trying to calm her husband. But her mother’s shallow voice was no match for the bombast, and her attempts just made him more furious with the world.

  “That Stalin cocksucker! He made me like this. A pauper. A fucking pauper! A Jewish fucking pauper! And you . . .” Judit didn’t have to see her father to know that his huge stubby finger was pointed at her mother. “You just fucking complain. And look at this house! A shithole. I work for nothing and you do nothing!”

  Little Judita didn’t really understand what her father was saying, but she knew from the terror in her mother’s voice that it was very bad.

  “Quiet. You’ll have us all arrested!” As her mother’s tears distorted her words, Judita could make out only “Siberia” and “gulag” again and again.

  Ekaterina, Abel’s wife of seventeen years, was terrified when he came home in one of these moods. Abel never laid a finger on her when he was sober; in fact, he was rather quiet and somber. But the moment he was drunk, which was often daily, Ekaterina knew what was to come. She would comfort the children when Abel Abramovich was asleep, telling them not to worry and that their daddy was only joking, but none of the children believed her. They’d lost faith in her words of reassurance long ago.

  At the end of his working day, it had become a tradition that he’d go into a drinking circle around one of the bonfires on the building site, and the bottles of cheap vodka would be passed around, along with the even cheaper cigarettes. The workers bought bowls of soup from an old woman trundling her cart from site to site, corner to corner. Cheap booze, cheap borscht, and hours sitting on the filthy ground smoking and drinking with his comrades until the freezing cold drove them home.

  Ekaterina wondered if her husband sounded off so vocally to his drinking friends about his disdain for Stalin. She suspected not. Such words were death. The OGPU, the secret police run by Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky, had ears everywhere; even children were known to report their parents. No, Ekaterina knew her husband saved these dangerous rants for when he got home. She also knew how thin the walls of their tiny two-room apartment were, and feared his voice more than his fists. His blows hurt only her, but his words could be the death of them all; they would simply disappear in the night, leaving behind just the whispered rumors of their neighbors. It was these thoughts that brought strength back to her voice.

  “Abel, shut up,” she hissed over the noise of the children’s whimpering. “Shut your mouth or you’ll get us all killed.”

  Abel was stunned by his wife’s admonishments and opened his mouth to reply but was silent. He stared at her, blinked several times, tried to remember what he was going to say, and then fell forward onto the floor like an overbalancing statue. His huge frame hit the wooden boards, and the room descended into sudden silence.

  Judita redoubled her efforts to hold back her tears. On this night of all nights, she realized that she hated her father. In turn, with her child’s logic, anything her father hated must be something good. She’d grown up to fear the uniforms of the police, but now, with the sounds of her father’s bellowing still echoing in her ears, she found herself imagining the uniformed police dragging her father away. And she smiled grimly.

  Ekaterina didn’t try to move her husband. He was too big, too bulky; she let him sleep where he’d fallen on the floor. She reached under the table and pulled out little Judita Ludmilla, comforting her with kisses and a soft Yiddish melody she’d learned from her own mother. She stroked her hair gently, kissed her on the cheek, the neck, and blew softly into her ear. Then she walked into the bedroom, pulled back the bedclothes, and gently lay Judita alongside her older sister and brother, who had crawled out from under the sheets.

  “Father is sleeping,” she said. “He’s very tired after a hard day’s work. You must understand, my little ones. Your father works to support us all.”

  The children nodded, and Ekaterina lay down beside them. They all snuggled into her body, and her son, Maxim, whispered, “I don’t like it when he shouts. And when he smells like that.”

  “I’m frightened as well,” said Galina, Maxim’s younger sister.

  “Then let me tell you a story,” Ekaterina said. “A nice story about a nice place. A story about Israel, where it’s always warm and there’s lots to eat. That’s the place where the Jewish people came from. That’s our real home, my children, not Moscow. And one day I’m going to take you back so you can enjoy your heritage. Do you remember me telling you about Israel? Do you want to hear that story, my babies?”

  Judita scowled. “I’m not a baby, Mama.”

  Ekaterina smiled. She closed her eyes and held her children even tighter. It was hard to picture a land of warmth and security, but she tried. It was a place she’d never seen with her own eyes, only in picture books. She tried to remember what the images looked like. There was a seashore, and sand dunes, and a city of white stone with a beautiful golden dome in the middle.

  Ekaterina took a deep breath and began. “In a city called Jerusalem, there once lived a man called King David. And he had many wives, as happened in those days. But one day on the roof of his palace, he looked down, and there he saw another beautiful woman called Bathsheba . . .”

  The town of Yavne, Roman province of Judea

  161 C.E. (first year of the co-emperorship of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus)

  TZADIK BAR CAIAPHAS flicked away a fat and lazy fly that had just landed atop the scrolls resting on his desk. Tzadik was the exiled high priest of Jerusalem, but as the city had been occupied as a Roman military base for decades, he, like all Jews, was forbidden for all time from freely entering Jerusalem, so his home was made beyond the city walls.

  The insect, black and bloated from feasting on rotting summer meats left in the refuse heap on the outskirts of the city, rose to the ceiling the moment the priest’s hands approached. It buzzed around the smoking oil lamp, then settled upside down on one of the wooden beams. Tzadik looked at it in wonder; why had the Lord Almighty created a creature that could spend its days living the wrong way up?

  Tzadik had lost count of how many flies and midges
and other irritating insects had interrupted his thoughts while he was working. It was a fiercely hot day, and although the drawn shades kept the blistering rays of the sun from entering the office, nothing could stop the enervating heat from draining all of his energy. It was like working in a tar pit. Beneath his robes of office, his golden turban, and his prayer shawl, his body was prickling in the airless cauldron that was his room. But he had work to do, and nothing must distract him.

  These were troubled times. Things in Judea were always fraught, but during the past few weeks, it was as though the very fabric of the nation were the skin of a drum and some manic musician was pounding out an erratic and unpredictable beat. The death of one Roman emperor had seen the enthroning of two in his place: a conjoined rule between Antoninus’s adoptive sons, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

  Tzadik and his fellow priests were well used to the tides that flowed through the fractured and torn cities and towns of the Roman province and, by and large, knew how to ride their rise and fall. The priests of Judea were nothing if not pragmatic. But the end of one reign and the beginning of another was always tumultuous and posed many questions for the priest. How would the new emperors treat their captured peoples? Would war begin in the north against Syria or the restive Mesopotamia? Would the new reign of the two emperors be filled with anti-Jewish edicts, new commands, new decrees, that would further damage his people?

  Above all, would this new emperor allow them to enter the city of Jerusalem once more? The once beautiful city that King David and King Solomon had built had been destroyed by the emperor Titus to little more than piles of rubble. The emperor Hadrian had rebuilt it but as a Roman command post and without the temple that was the center of the Jewish world. Would they one day be allowed to rebuild the temple?

  These were the questions that filled the mind of the priest, though he was not so removed from the truth of the world as to be ignorant to the reality faced by his people. Roman soldiers who would thrust a spear into a Jew just for the pleasure of it. Constant skirmishes between their Sadducee brethren and the Pharisees, from the remnants of the Zealots who still dreamed about an Israel free of Rome, from those who wanted to live in peace with the Romans, from those who wanted to worship the gods of other peoples, and from those who demanded that only Yahweh be worshipped. This was the cacophony that troubled the nights of Tzadik bar Caiaphas, and he had set himself to accommodating the Romans as best as possible so there was no repeat of the massacres that had decimated his people in the past.