At the agnostic settlement of Kfar Kerem the Jewish holidays had not been celebrated, for the hard-headed followers of Shmuel Hacohen had come to believe that much of Jewish religiosity was both archaic and an insult to reason; but if individual families wished to observe Passover, which did memorialize freedom, they could. Netanel Hacohen and his wife had never done so, but at the homes of friends Ilana had several times celebrated the noble holiday, so she at least knew the rough outline of the ritual. Hesitantly she whispered the famous preliminary question: “ ‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’ ” Then in a soft voice she asked the first question: “ ‘Why on other nights do we eat leaven, but tonight only unleavened?’ ” The other three Jews chanted an answer and she stumbled her uncertain way through the second question: “ ‘Why on other nights do we eat all vegetables, but tonight only bitter herbs?’ ” Again the listeners chanted the explanation and she started the third question.
She forgot what it was. Gottesmann blushed as if he were a nervous father whose child was being watched by hundreds. The rebbe fidgeted. Finally the rebbetzin pointed openly to her hands, whose washing was the subject of the third question, but Ilana thought she was indicating a chair. “Oh, yes!” she cried brightly, like a happy child. “ ‘Why on other nights do some sit relaxed and some sit uneasily, while tonight all sit back in comfort?’ ” It was the fourth question but no one corrected her, for a burst of gunfire came from the Arab quarter and Gottesmann leaped to his feet, grabbed his rifle and was gone through the open door.
Acting on reflex Ilana also jumped from the Passover feast and reached for her gun, but she was halted by the rebbetzin. “This is the night of Passover,” the old woman said, forcing Ilana back into her chair. Then she went to the door, and again cocked it open as her husband passed on to that portion of the feast at which he asked, “ ‘Why do we leave the door open? Why do we pour the extra glass of wine?’ ” and Ilana was required to answer in the lovely fairy-tale nonsense of tradition that the door was left open for the Prophet Elijah to join this feast, and by tradition all turned to watch the half-opened door to see if just once Elijah might appear; but when Ilana looked she prayed that it might be not Elijah but Gottesmann. The firing grew heavier.
When the legendary songs were ended, with the rebbe’s high voice singing of the joy the Hebrews had known when escaping to freedom, even though it was the freedom of the desert without water or food, the celebration reached that strange and very Jewish moment when all present chanted what appeared to be only a nursery rhyme:
“One kid, one kid
That father bought
For two zuzim.”
With a joy unbroken by the hammering of Arab bullets the rebbe and his bewigged wife sang of “the angel that slew the butcher that killed the ox that drank the water that quenched the fire that burned the stick that beat the dog that bit the cat
That ate the kid
That father bought
For two zuzim.”
Neither Elijah nor Gottesmann came through the door that night, so the three waiting Jews sat at the table through the long hours and inaugurated that probing dialogue between the blue-eyed rebbe and the suntanned sabra which was to continue through the eight days of Passover and into the beginning of May, days when it seemed as if the compressing Arabs must crush the Jews at last, days during which only an extraordinary heroism kept the Jewish quarter of the old town viable. That the Jews of Safad resisted was a miracle, truly it could be called only that, for from all vantage points the Arabs poured down a steady rifle fire, picking off any Jew who moved unwarily. Yet somehow the stiff-necked Jews hung on, outnumbered, outgunned, outmaneuvered; and during this heroic defense of an area that could not possibly be held, but which all were determined to hold, Ilana and Rebbe Itzik talked.
REBBE in Yiddish: Do you really believe that against God’s expressed will you can establish a state of Israel in the Holy Land?
SABRA in Hebrew: Yes. Men like my husband …
REBBE in Yiddish: How do you dare to call him your husband? You’re not married.
SABRA in Hebrew: I call him my husband because my father summoned two neighbors, and in their presence announced, “My daughter is married. Have lots of children.” Isn’t that the way Jews were married on this land four thousand years ago? Were there rabbis then?
REBBE: Years pass and people grow wiser. Through many centuries the Jews found it best that their daughters marry in a certain way. Formally. With community sanction. You’re not strong enough to live by your own laws. But you will be strong if you follow our sacred traditions. If you marry your tall Ashkenazi legally. As wise persons do.
SABRA: You keep speaking of traditions. It’s I who am going back to the great traditions of this land. To the traditions of the patriarchs … Moses … Aaron … Jacob, men who lived in freedom. It’s you who want to ignore those traditions and substitute ugly little tricks picked up in Poland and Russia, where Jews lived like pigs.
REBBE: You may not respect countries like Poland and Russia, but for two thousand years the Jews of the world have been forced to live in such countries. What happened to them there has determined their history, their character. Would you erase Maimonides, who lived in Egypt? And Baal Shem Tov, who lived in Poland? And the Vilna Gaon, who lived in Lithuania?
SABRA: Yes. We’re going to build a new state here, not a pale copy of something that was pitiful even when it existed in Poland and Lithuania. We want new laws, new customs, new everything. And we insist that this newness be based upon the Jews as they were in ancient times. On this land.
REBBE: But what existed then has meaning only in terms of what took place in the intervening years. Of all the Jews who have ever lived in the world, nine out of ten never saw Israel. Are you going to pick your tradition only from the one-tenth who happened to live here?
SABRA: Yes. If the nine-tenths got so badly off the track we’d better forget their errors.
REBBE: And you’re willing to throw over all the wisdom accumulated in the Talmud?
SABRA: Yes. You rabbis have made of the Talmud a prison of the spirit, and if we have to surrender what goodness there is in the Talmud to break out of that prison, we’ll do so. Then go back to pick up what’s good and necessary.
REBBE: DO you believe that one generation of Jews will have sufficient wisdom and moral insight to rebuild what it took our greatest minds, Akiba, Maimonides, two thousand years to construct?
SABRA: These are radical times. If we choose wisely we can rebuild.
REBBE: Don’t you respect the Talmud?
SABRA: No. When my grandfather came to Tiberias nearly seventy years ago he was stripped naked and beaten by the Talmud scholars in that town. They said his idea to put Jews on the land was folly. When he brought over a settlement from Russia the Jews took one look at the land he had selected and they all wanted to run in behind the walls of Tiberias and study Talmud. They had escaped one Talmudic ghetto but sought refuge in another. Anything that does that to a people is wrong.
REBBE: Have you forgotten what Maimonides said about Jews as they built a nation? “Attach your nation to a true thing which shall not alter or be destroyed, and raise your voices in a faith that shall never fail. In this covenant stay, in this religion hold fast, in this your faith remain.” Is there a better counsel?
SABRA: No. But you have said that you’re against the state, so why worry about its form?
REBBE: I am always concerned about what Jews do.
SABRA: So if we have a state, you want it to be as old-fashioned as possible?
REBBE: I want all Jews to live within the fence of the Talmud. Have you forgotten what the great Rabbi Akiba said? The fish were having a difficult time with the nets in the stream and the fox called, “Leave the dangerous water. Come up on land,” and the fish were about to do so when their leader asked, “If we are having a difficult time in the water, which is our element, how much more dangerous will be the land, where the fox waits to eat us
?” If Jews have difficulty within the Talmud, which is their element, how much worse will they be without it?
SABRA: My real complaint against the Talmud is my father’s … and my grandfather’s. That rabbis with narrow consciences interpret it. The Torah says simply, “The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work …” That’s straightforward. But the rabbis write whole books about what a man shall not do on Shabbat, and when Safad is about to fall to the Arabs you bring out those books to halt sensible work. If we win an Israel for you, do you expect to enforce each detail of those many books?
REBBE: Whether I leave Safad alive or not is God’s will. If we die, we shall die as we have died in the past. But if I am to be saved, I shall insist that Israel observe every law that God gave us.
SABRA: As interpreted by you?
REBBE: You frighten me when you rely so arrogantly upon your personal judgment as to what will be good for the state you plan.
SABRA: Not my judgment. The judgment of all who bring the state into being.
REBBE: Don’t you know what has happened to Jews when they relied upon their own illumination? When they by-passed the Talmud? Up this street used to live one of the most alluring Jews of history, Dr. Abulafia. Assisted by others of similar power he developed a mystical insight into the nature of God. An insight which he made available to every man. Each man his own rabbi. God talking personally to each man as he talked to Moses our Teacher. Perhaps new commandments to be delivered direct from God without the searching analysis and intervention of the rabbis.
SABRA: Would you as a rabbi veto what God himself has spoken?
REBBE: Of course. God tells us what is good for the world and the rabbis study his word to determine what is good for man.
SABRA: Then if our state has an elected parliament like England, or a congress like the United States, you would be willing for a group of rabbis to review their laws and say what should be obeyed and what should not?
REBBE: Of course. Someone must do it, and this is what rabbis are trained to do. Because in the days following Dr. Abulafia, when each man was his own rabbi, who came upon us offering his credentials and crying that he was the Messiah but Shabbetai Zevi? A Turkish Jew from Smyrna. Given to fits of exhilaration and depression. And his movement swept through the Jews of Europe, so that men in Vodzh were convinced that in 1665 the world would enter paradise in compensation for the Czmielnicki massacres of the decades before. Those were exciting days, wonderful for Jews … and then you know what happened? Shabbetai Zevi, the savior of the Jewish people, was captured in Constantinople and before even one torture was applied he converted to Islam. Our great savior had the courage of a mouse, and the damage he did to Jews of the world cannot be calculated.
SABRA: You believe the rabbis could have prevented the debacle?
REBBE: Only rabbis can keep Judaism pure. The rabbis of Jerusalem knew that Shabbetai was an impostor and said so. The rabbis where he first spread his poison gave the same warning. And a hundred years after Shabbetai Zevi vanished from history as a good Muslim, he was followed by another who was worse, Jacob Frank. He, too, was the Messiah and he, too, was opposed by the rabbis. But he was persuasive and gained great power. He taught that to know goodness man must first know evil, and under his spell the poor men of Vodzh initiated abominations of the body, and all in the name of the Messiah. And when Judaism was well corrupted, what did Jacob Frank do?
SABRA: I don’t know of him. What did this one do?
REBBE: He said that the Talmud should be publicly burned, which it was. And then?
SABRA: What?
REBBE: He led his whole congregation to the Catholic cathedral, where they were baptized.
SABRA: He did?
REBBE: But even the Catholics found they didn’t want him. They discovered that when his Catholic Jews prayed to the Trinity they meant God, Shabbetai Zevi and Jacob Frank, so they locked Frank up in a monastery. Why, even Safad has produced its own false Messiah. The legendary Joseph della Reine, who followed in the footsteps of Shabbetai Zevi in that he, too, converted to Islam. So you see, we Jews cannot be trusted if we stray too far from our rabbis.
SABRA: Then you see a people permanently bound by the old laws of the Polish ghetto?
REBBE: I see, when the Messiah comes, a Jewish state. In France or America agnostics are free to build any kind of state they wish. But a Jew who believes in the one God is not. It must be a Jewish state, and it must take into account the totality of Jewish law. And that law is what the rabbis say it is.
SABRA: Ours will be a Jewish state, but it will go back to the Jewishness of four thousand years ago, before your eastern European corruption.
REBBE: Jews are alive today to fight for your state only because the ghettos you despise kept them alive. And they were kept alive only by the force of rabbis administering the Talmud in every tiny community. You exist today because my grandfather existed in Vodzh and fought the Poles and the Russians and the Germans before them. Without him you would not be. And what sustained him? What sustained the Jews of Vodzh against oppressions that the mind of man prefers not to recall? An unalterable faith in the laws.
SABRA: If we are to keep ghetto Judaism alive, I would sooner see the Arabs win.
REBBE: There is no other that can be kept alive. For it is the inheritor. And Jews above all people exist on their inheritance.
SABRA: We’re making a new inheritance. In Vodzh your grandfather and his good Jews waited in the synagogue and bared their throats for the pogrom. And his grandfathers waited for Czmielnicki and his gang. No more, Rebbe. If the Arabs are to kill us in Safad, they shall have to kill every goddamned Jew, and before they get to you, they’ll have to shoot me down, because I’ll be killing them to the last minute with this rifle. We are the new Jews.
REBBE: Mein tochter, you do not make a new tradition by blaspheming. You girls, so proud of your rifles and your drills. Standing side by side with your men, where you should not be. This is no brave new tradition, but a very old one, and of it Moses himself said, “When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand.”
SABRA: I have never heard a more preposterous straining of a text to prove a point. If an Arab reach out his hand to strive with my husband, I shall shoot that Arab between the eyes. I am a daughter of Deborah, and when we win Safad I shall dance and sing as she did.
REBBE: I am distressed when you speak of power and force of arms. You forget what Moses our Teacher said: “The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people.” It is our task to illuminate the rest of the world by our allegiance to the one God.
SABRA: It’s our task right now to win a nation, and we’re going to do so.
REBBE: You speak with such contemporary arrogance that I have trouble in reminding you that perhaps we rabbis are the ones who best understand the world. My brother in Vodzh is more orthodox than I, more removed from life, as you might say. May I read the response he wrote in 1945? It has done more to save the lives of girls like you than anything you will ever do.
Question: Two fair Jewesses of Vodzh have come to me much distraught because their husbands and their families refuse to accept them back into the bosom of their homes, and the reason is that each girl has tattooed in bold letters on her right forearm the words FIELD WHORE FOR THE GERMAN ARMY. Their husbands argue, say the girls, that their marriage bonds are dissolved because of the use to which the girls were put in the slave camps. Their families argue that the girls should have died in their shame, and an uncle says that they should have cut off their arms before allowing Jews to see the uses to which they were put. What to do?
Response: The law on this matter is so clear that any man can understand it. Any married woman who becomes a prostit
ute shall, like the wife of Hosea, be put aside. The husbands are correct in thinking their marriages dissolved. And the law says that any daughter who becomes a prostitute shall be taken to the edge of the city by her own father and there stoned to death. The families are therefore also correct in thinking that their daughters have dissolved the family relationship, according to the law.
But that cannot be the end of the matter, for in the cases of these two Jewish wives ordinary words do not apply. It is 1941 that we are talking about, and we see four young Jewish brides brought before a tribunal of the cruel ones. The judge says to the two who are not beautiful, “Go to the boxcar,” and to the other two, who are, “Have your arms tattooed and go into the whorehouse.” To defy either command means instant death. Had these girls a choice? Does a Jewish girl of good family offer her arm to be tattooed or her body to be abused? Was there one of us in this little town who did not know the terror of the evil ones? How can we forget and today say that this girl should have behaved so, and that this man’s wife should have done thus?
I therefore direct that these two women return to their husbands and to their families, and that all receive them as thank offerings of the Lord, that we have been spared. To my synagogue they shall come with honor, to my house with praise. We have all come back from the brink of the grave but few with so clear a mark of God’s divine forgiveness as these girls wear. If any man in Vodzh shall speak against them, either husband or father, that man is forever excommunicated from the Jewry of this town and from any other town where this letter can reach.
The Source: A Novel Page 120
