The Source: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  “And then I went to Chicago. And I lugged that lousy Candlestick of Death up and down Illinois making speeches to Jewish women’s clubs, the kind Israelis like to joke about, and do you know what I discovered? That some of the finest people this world has produced are the Jewish women of Illinois. They live wonderful, satisfying lives without remembering Persia and Egypt and the Maccabees and the Sinai Desert and Jerusalem. They work for the local art museum and build new wings for the hospital and serve on the board of education and pay the deficit for the symphony orchestra and do all they can to make their world a better place to live in. Take away from Illinois what the Jewish women do, and that state would be a dump. And the only thing those women are required to remember is when to make the next payment on the television set. And you may be surprised to hear it, but I can hardly wait to become one of them.”

  Eliav clenched his hands and pulled them against his stomach. In pain he asked, “For this emptiness you’d sacrifice Judaism? For the fleshpots of Egypt, stainless-steel version?”

  “Stop it!” Vered cried, beating her palms against the table. “Stop throwing those old clichés at me. I raise a clear, well-defined issue and you mumble what sententious Jews have been mumbling since the time of Moses. The fleshpots of Egypt. I refuse to accept that any longer.” She waved her hands and placed them over her ears. “I refuse to spend the rest of my life remembering. I will not remember.”

  Eliav, again in control of his bitterness, said quietly, “Your Gentile neighbors in Illinois will do your remembering for you,” and it was on this point that Eliav and Zodman initiated their acrimonious debate.

  ISRAELI: Does Vered think that by going to America she escapes being a Jew?

  AMERICAN: She certainly does.

  ISRAELI: She escapes until that moment on her honeymoon when the hotel clerk says, “No Jews allowed.”

  AMERICAN: We learn how to avoid such hotels.

  ISRAELI: Or until the medical school tells her son, “Our Jewish quota is filled.”

  AMERICAN: They don’t put it that way any more.

  ISRAELI: Or until a new Senator McCarthy comes along. And fails in his economic promises. And has to use you Jews as his scapegoat.

  AMERICAN: Now we have safeguards against that sort of thing.

  ISRAELI: Or until some new international tragedy like Nazi Germany …

  AMERICAN: The world will never again allow a thing like that to happen.

  ISRAELI: It will happen before your first son is born. South America? South Africa? Quebec?

  AMERICAN: Something will be worked out, I’m sure.

  ISRAELI: You sound just like my uncle in Gretz, 1933. And he was right. Something was indeed worked out. And they hung Adolf Eichmann for having worked it out.

  AMERICAN: You can’t go on scaring the Jews of America, Eliav.

  ISRAELI: I don’t do the scaring. History does.

  AMERICAN: In America we have guarantees that protect us from history. Besides, you overlook one important fact. In America that natural hatred which exists in all people is directed not against the Jew but the Negro.

  ISRAELI: If he perishes, you perish.

  AMERICAN: You can’t apply European experience to America. It’s the greatest error I hear Israelis make, and you make it all the time. We Americans are different. Of my non-Jewish neighbors more than half have come from outside countries. We’re all minority groups.

  ISRAELI: And they brought their anti-Jewish prejudice with them. You say you’re different, but it’s not because you’re an American. It’s because you’re a Jew, and America will never let you forget that difference. Neither you nor your children.

  AMERICAN: Years go by without my experiencing a shred of anti-Semitism.

  ISRAELI: You experience it every day, but have become hardened to it.

  AMERICAN: Seems to me you’re angry with us American Jews for two reasons. We’ve built a new way of life that’s the best the Jew has ever known in this world. And we refuse to emigrate to Israel.

  ISRAELI: Let’s take your reasons one at a time. As for your new way of life, it’s a false old dream in a golden ghetto. A religion that isn’t Judaism. A synagogue that’s a mere social center and a third generation that thinks it’s been accepted by the majority if it names its son Bryan. It’s a shallow, ugly, materialistic pattern of life, and it leads to one clear goal: assimilation. The rate of intermarriage among young Jews in America is over ten per cent and climbing toward twenty-five. A new way of life? No, an old delusion leading to oblivion, when there will be no more Jews.

  AMERICAN: That doesn’t frighten me. If following Moses for four thousand years has got us where we are, a people totally apart, I think it’s time we tried the American pattern. I’ll be a good Jew. Vered will be. But if my son Bryan, as you call him, wants to lose himself in the main stream, I say let him do it.

  ISRAELI; In that case Israel is really needed to preserve Judaism, and you’ve been very remiss about sending us immigration to help save the Jewish state.

  AMERICAN: Our job is to stay in America and make it the safest home in the world for Jews. And then to share our goodness with our fellow Jews in Israel. And if I may be forgiven a personal reference, I have been careful to share that goodness and have advised my rich neighbors in Chicago to do the same.

  ISRAELI: You’ve been generous with everything but human beings. Have you ever watched an immigrant ship arrive? Mostly uneducated people from Africa. People call them Arab-Jews. Strong-minded Ashkenazim fear that if such immigration dominates for the next hundred years, Israel can only become another Levantine state. A Middle East backward country in which a handful of European Jews ran things for a while before submerging their state in some kind of honorable alliance with Lebanon or Egypt. And so the vision of a Jewish homeland perishes once more. I’m not so pessimistic. I’m dedicating my life to the proposal that we can establish some kind of Jewish-Arab federation in this area, to the benefit of both. But to do this we must have more highly educated western Jews. And men like you accept no responsibility.

  AMERICAN: Indeed I do! I send you every nickel the law allows.

  ISRAELI: But people you won’t send? Yourself, for instance.

  AMERICAN: Me? Live here?

  ISRAELI: Yes. Instead of contributing manpower, you take away one of the most highly educated women we have. And next year you’ll take away half a dozen of our best-trained young Jews. As a matter of fact, you’d like to take me, wouldn’t you?

  AMERICAN: Last time I said I’d be proud to have both you and Tabari.

  ISRAELI: And you see nothing immoral in this? Using Israel as an intellectual quarry from which to dig the brains your system has failed to produce?

  AMERICAN: I believe that a man of talent must go where he can make the best living. And when he’s done so, he must share his bounty with others. You can be sure that when Vered becomes an American we’ll send large sums of money each year to Israel.

  ISRAELI: We … don’t … want … charity!

  AMERICAN: You damned well ask for it hard enough. Every year the U.J.A. man perches on my desk. “We must do more for Israel! It’s a brave country, fighting our battle.”

  ISRAELI: So you want to keep us a minor Montenegro? A little enclave that thrills the world because its fighters defend themselves against the Arab circle? So that Jews in America can feel pride? What would be the moral justification for such an Israel? But if we can become a beacon of pure, burning light, illuminating this entire area, forming an alliance with a prospering Arab world … making it a true fertile crescent …

  AMERICAN: You sound like the U.J.A. man.

  ISRAELI: There’s no other way to sound. And what I want Israel to become she cannot become if the Jews of America steal our talent and return only money.

  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 th
ings. 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.”