Assembling his staff he asked, “What is the final word on Galilee?” and they replied crisply, “As difficult as ever. Hilly. Filled with caves occupied by zealots. Little walled towns on hilltops. And all commanded by the best general the Jews have ever produced.”
“Who?”
“Josephus. A young man educated in Rome. About thirty. Brilliant in the open. More brilliant when cornered. So far the Romans have never beaten him. In victory he’s arrogant, in defeat brazen. In some miraculous manner he rescues both himself and his troops to fight the next day.”
“Where is he now?”
“Lucky for us he’s in Tiberias, wasting his time.”
“You’re sure he’s not in Makor?” Vespasian asked.
“No. He seems to have overlooked its significance.”
“You’re certain he’s not in Makor?” Vespasian repeated.
“Our spies from Tiberias saw him on the lake last night. Our spies from Makor say he’s never been in that town and isn’t now.”
“Then we shall speed with all force to take this point.” And the broad, stubby forefinger of the Roman leader obliterated the dot on his map that signified Makor; so on April 4 in that critical year of 67, General Vespasian, assisted by Generals Titus and Trajan, left Ptolemais with nearly sixty thousand men and one hundred and sixty major engines of war. Nero’s vengeance against the Jews was about to be exacted.
… THE TELL
On one aspect of life in Israel foreigners rarely received a straight answer, not because Israelis practiced duplicity, but because no one living in Israel saw the problem the way outsiders did. By curious accident John Cullinane finally received honest instruction on the matter, but when he did he found that he could discuss it with no one, because the others had not shared his experience.
From his earlier work in Israel, Cullinane knew the outlines of Hebrew history and understood that there were two types of Jews—Ashkenazi from Germany and Sephardi from Spain—but he had supposed that any basic differences between them had long since dissolved. Nevertheless, he kept seeing cryptic references in the press.
“What’s this Ashkenazi-Sephardi business?” he asked Eliav.
“Nothing of consequence.”
“Are Jews still divided into the two groups?”
“Yes.” Obviously Eliav wanted to stop the conversation.
“Which are you?”
“Ashkenazi, of course.”
Cullinane got the impression that his pipe-smoking colleague was proud of his Ashkenazi background. Later, when he had asked her about the matter, Vered was even more abrupt than her fiancé had been. “A trivial difference,” she snapped.
“Which are you?” he asked.
“Ashkenazi, of course,” And she, too, seemed proud of the designation. Then he began seeing short statements in the press to the effect that “the Sephardi Jews can better their relative position in Israel only by education.” He asked Vered what this meant and again she brushed him off: “John, it’s a minor educational problem that we’ll take care of in time.” But a few days later one of the leaders of the Sephardi community—whatever that was—stated: “In education we Sephardim are outrageously discriminated against, as indeed we are in all aspects of public life in Israel.” Again Cullinane asked what it meant, and again Vered assured him, “It’s nothing you would understand, John.”
Unable to get satisfaction from his colleagues, Cullinane went to the library, where the standard histories confirmed his rough understanding: the Ashkenazim were mentioned in the Torah as a minor Jewish people, whose name was ultimately used to designate Germany, and since it was from there that Jews emigrated to countries like Poland, Russia and America, most Jews in the western world tended to be Ashkenazim; whereas the Sephardim were those Jews who had moved first to Spain and thence to countries like Morocco, the Balkans and the less civilized parts of the world. Between the two communities a feud had developed: the Sephardim constituted the aristocracy of Judaism while the Ashkenazim were the uneducated field hands. It was the Sephardim who produced many of the great Jews of history—Maimonides and Spinoza for example—and certainly in America they formed the elite, characterized by men like Justice Cardozo. But when education became available in eastern Europe, the Ashkenazim quickly gained the ascendancy, while the once-honored name Sephardi was denigrated and applied to all Jews who were not Ashkenazi, whether they had any association with Spain or not, so that today Sephardi meant loosely the oriental Jew as opposed to the European, the lumpen proletariat as contrasted to the sophisticated expert from Russia or Germany. The two groups differed in inconsequential ways: Ashkenazim spoke Yiddish based on German; many Sephardim used Ladino, a vulgar Spanish. They also pronounced Hebrew differently, the Sephardi usage representing the world standard; and they followed different synagogue rituals, where the Ashkenazi was often preferred.
Prior to Nazism and the establishment of Israel the differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardi had been diminishing and indeed almost vanishing; of the 16,500,000 Jews in the world, a full 15,000,000 were Ashkenazi, and they controlled all significant movements and committees. “I doubt if I ever knew a Sephardi Jew,” Cullinane reflected. “There probably weren’t many in Chicago.”
But with the extermination of 6,000,000 Ashkenazim in World War II and the bottling up of another 3,000,000 in Russia, the Sephardim became proportionately more important; and when the state of Israel was launched, its geographical position in Asia meant that it contained more Sephardi oriental Jews than Ashkenazi Europeans. Suddenly what had been a diminishing factor became one of central significance.
“Jews won’t discuss it with you,” Tabari warned as he drove Cullinane to Akko for the purpose of picking up supplies. “They hope it’s a problem that will go away if nobody ventilates it too much.”
“Why do you say problem?” Cullinane asked, as the beautiful spires of Akko rose from the sea.
“Well, as an Arab I’m naturally closer to the Sephardim and perhaps I see things from their point of view. But I don’t believe I’m being prejudiced when I say that the Sephardim constitute more than half the population of Israel but hold less than five per cent of the good jobs.”
“Education?” Cullinane asked.
“And their easy way of life.” The Arab reflected, then said, “Let’s put it this way. If I were going on a camping trip with a bunch of Jews I’d want them to be Sephardim. Because then I’d be assured of a rollicking time. But if I had a factory where profits were obligatory, I’d insist upon hiring an Ashkenazi manager and as few Sephardi workmen as possible.”
This seemed an improbable situation to exist in Israel, a nation called into being as an answer to discrimination, but Cullinane said nothing. Later he asked, “Do we hire any Sephardim at the dig?”
“Not on the staff, of course. They don’t have the education. And there are none in the kibbutz gang, because they avoid kibbutz life. Among our volunteer students, two of the best. And naturally our Moroccans are all Sephardi.” He drove for a few minutes, then added, “Good Ashkenazim like Vered and Eliav are worried lest continued immigration change Israel into a Sephardi state.” Cullinane asked if that would be bad, but Tabari countered, “Look, old man, it’s not proper for me as an Arab to be discussing a purely Jewish problem. Ask Eliav. Or Vered.”
“I did. And they said, ‘It’s of no consequence.’ ”
“Being Ashkenazi, they would.” He stated this with no rancor but with a finality that announced, “I’ve no more to say.” But before he had driven another hundred yards he added, “The best clue is this. A heart specialist from America examined one thousand Jews in Israel. Of the Ashkenazim, sixty-four per cent showed signs of potential heart trouble. Of the Sephardim, less than two per cent.”
In Akko, Cullinane was impressed anew at the easy manner in which Tabari moved from one small shop to another, joking with everyone and picking up minor items needed at camp, but after a while Cullinane wandered off on his own to investigate a
small mud-walled house from which loud noise was issuing. From the street he listened for a while to singing and shouting, then started to drift on, but he was hailed by a stout woman who cried from the door in Spanish, “Come on in, American.” He did not speak the language well, but at the dig in Arizona he had picked up a few colloquialisms.
“¿Que vaya?” he asked.
“Elijah’s celebration,” she said, offering him a bottle of beer. Jabbing her elbows back and forth she bulldozed a passageway through the crowd and led him into a small synagogue, about the size of a hotel bedroom and jammed with perhaps half a hundred oriental Jews, bearded, happy, shouting. The hallway was overflowing with women and children, babies and barking dogs. Services had not yet started and there was a wild passing back and forth of beer bottles, Israeli sandwiches in which layers of goodies were crammed into a pocket of flat bread, a hideous orange soda pop and plates of paste made from ground chickpeas. The conviviality was extraordinary and the noise increased when a fat beadle started bellowing, “You!” When people began poking Cullinane in the ribs he realized that the beadle was shouting at him.
“Put your hat on in the beth knesset!” the fat man yelled.
Cullinane had no hat, but the large woman found him a yarmulke and popped it on the back of his head. “Now you’re as good a Jew as we are,” she said in good English.
“What’s this about Elijah?” he asked.
“We’re marching to his cave,” she explained.
“Where’s that?”
“In Haifa.”
“Marching? In this heat?” It must have been more than fifteen miles from Akko to Haifa.
“We march twenty feet,” she laughed. “Rest of the way by bus.” She told him to join the men in the synagogue proper and he said he doubted if any more could squeeze in, but she rejoined, “You’ve got muscles,” and she gave him a stout shove in the middle of his back.
There was one thing in the synagogue he would never forget. By the door of the crowded room sat an idiot, a marvelous, gentle-faced young man of perhaps twenty-four, with the fat and happy cheeks of one who has surrendered all responsibility. His face radiated holiness, and those who entered the room bowed down to kiss him on the forehead, and he looked back at them with the compassionate eyes of YHWH. It was a terrifying experience—this group of old, bearded Jews bowing down to kiss God’s vicar—and Cullinane thought: At last I know one difference between the Sephardi and the Ashkenazi. No German Jew would humble himself to do that.
The singing was delightful, an echo from the Old Testament when the Hebrews had lived in tents along the edges of the desert. It was oriental, a long-drawn wailing with kinds of sequences that Cullinane had not heard before, passionate music sung with passion. There was, so far as he could detect, no Jewishness about it but only the timeless wailing of the desert. Suddenly his ears were shattered by a different sound coming from the hallway jammed with women. It was a war cry—he could call it nothing less—in which several women uttered shrieks while vibrating their tongues rapidly against the roofs of their mouths. The effect was shattering, and he left the synagogue proper to ask the large woman what the new shouting was about, only to find that she was leading the noisemakers.
“What is it?” he asked.
She stopped the war cry and laughed. “Call me Shulamit,” she said. “It’s the cry Arab women use when they want to inspire their men at a battle or a massacre.” She put her head back and uttered a piercing rendition, which was joined by other women. Shoving a plateful of the food into his hands, Shulamit said, “This is a day of joy. Eat!” And as he did so she returned to her war cries.
“If you want to pray,” the beadle shouted in Spanish, “get inside. You kids!” he added in Hebrew. “Stop that! Let’s have some quiet here.” Six men began roaring for silence and one took to cuffing the older boys on the head, while these in turn abused the younger, who picked on the girls.
“Silence!” the beadle bellowed, wiping his steaming face. Again his call was echoed by his six helpers.
The noise increased. The singing continued and the women punctuated the bedlam with their war cries, trilling their tongues with fascinating speed. The idiot spilled a bottle of orange pop down his front, but a very old man in a long white beard cleaned the young man’s clothes with the cuff of his coat. There was more shouting for silence, and a boy struck a girl so hard that she began to cry, whereupon the two mothers involved beat their offspring heartily, after which there was muffled sobbing. An old rabbi started a speech to which no one in the hallway listened, and few in the synagogue.
“Silence!” roared the beadle, but one of the women had appeared with a large tray of cold beer and a bottle of arrack, which passed from mouth to mouth as the rabbi droned on. It seemed to Cullinane that every second sentence contained the word Sephardim, which the old man pronounced Sfaradeem, and Cullinane, picking out what Hebrew he could understand, said to himself: Eliav and Vered can say that the Sephardim have no real grievance, but they should listen to what this one is saying. It was a lament such as a rabbi might have uttered a thousand years ago, except that then the word Sephardim had scarcely been invented. “Where are our leaders?” the old man wailed. “Why do we let them abuse us as they do?” If it had not been for the gulping of beer, the shouting of children, the choking taste of the raw arrack, the cries of the women and continued bellowing of the beadle, the address would have had a kind of pathos. In its present setting it was merely a formula: “What has happened to our beloved Sfaradeem?” What, indeed.
At the end of the old man’s harangue the beadle and his helpers took from the holy place four scrolls of the Torah, encased in handsome wooden boxes ornamented with silver horns, and the procession to Elijah’s Cave formed up, with women crying, men shouting, the idiot dancing and the old men in beards walking solemnly through the classic streets of Akko, leading a chant which in time became hypnotic. “Who are the people who serve God?” a man cried. “Israel!” shouted the crowd. “Israel, Israel, Israel!” came the cry, a hundred times, a thousand.
The procession went only a few blocks to where some buses waited, whose loading was such a study in frenzy that Cullinane watched with a kind of horrified fascination. “Come along!” Shulamit cried, dragging the Irishman after her.
“I can’t leave my friend,” Cullinane protested.
“Who is he?” the big woman shouted.
“Jemail Tabari.”
“Everybody knows Jemail. You!” she shouted to a little boy. “Tell Jemail the American’s gone to Elijah’s Cave.” She threw the child a coin and Cullinane said that he would repay her. She turned around and looked at him. “Are you crazy?” she asked, grabbing a fresh bottle of beer.
It was a trip that Cullinane would often recall, a voyage to the heart of Israel. Like most Americans visiting the country he had met principally the well-bred, the sophisticated Jews of the political elite. Vered Bar-El and Eliav were typical, but more important was this powerful sub-strata, this lusty, arrack-guzzling mob, so joyous and vital. The round-faced idiot looked back through the bus and clapped his hands clumsily, whereupon a woman again started the Arab war cry and the noise began that would not cease that day. It was a trip not to Elijah’s Cave but to some point far back in history, perhaps to the time of Elijah himself, and if Cullinane had not been fortunate enough to make it he would have failed to appreciate a major aspect of Judaism.
“I cannot understand what happened to us,” Shulamit said in Spanish as she munched a huge sandwich while forcing food upon Cullinane.
“You mean the Jews?” he asked.
“No,” she replied. “The Sephardim. Since 1500 we’ve been the principal Jews in Israel. At Zefat, Tiberias, Jerusalem, we were the ones who counted. When the state started, in 1948, we were the numerous ones, but our leaders had always lacked force and by 1949 all the responsible jobs were held by Ashkenazim. Since then it gets worse, year by year.”
“Is there conscious discrimination?”
“You feel yourself being excluded? You Sephardim generally?”
Shulamit gave a wild cry, then asked abruptly, “You’re not a newspaperman, are you?”
“Archaeologist,” Cullinane assured her.
“Because this is an Israeli problem,” Shulamit insisted. “We don’t need advice from outside.”
“I’m giving none,” Cullinane promised, and she continued to speak of the fact that between Ashkenazi and Sephardi there was little social contact and few marriages, that good places in the medical school went always to the Ashkenazi, that business, law, newspapering, cabinet positions … all were reserved for the other group.
“I doubt it’s as bad as you say,” Cullinane argued, “but let’s suppose that it’s half true. Who’s at fault?”
“We’re not talking about fault, we’re talking about fact. And if it continues, this country is in trouble.”
“How’d you get into a mess like this?”
“Don’t blame the Sephardim!” she protested.
“I’m not blaming anybody.”
“Because in America, where I used to work, the Ashkenazi have their own problems. A German Jew would not allow his daughter to marry a Galicianer.”
“Who are they?”
“From Poland. The worst part.” And Cullinane got the impression that Shulamit would never marry a Galicianer, either.
The scene at Elijah’s Cave, high on a hill overlooking the Bay of Haifa, was a fitting climax to the synagogue and the bus ride. Thousands of people, mostly Sephardim, toiled up a very steep hill to a series of buildings which could accommodate perhaps two hundred. One teetering affair bore the notice:
The Source: A Novel Page 57
