The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  “Her friend from the ship—he’s here at Sejera. He’s coming for Sabbath Eve!” It hardly needed Leah to explain.

  A guest, even a suitor, and how could there be a Sabbath meal for such a one without a fowl? From the two hens Dvora had raised a small flock. But here it was already noon. And where was there a slaughterer? There was no longer time to go to Tiberias or even to Yavniel and return. And to slaughter a chicken without a shochet—this, Tateh would never allow.

  “It doesn’t matter, he’s coming to see Dvora, not to eat chicken,” Leah laughed at her mother, yet Feigel was dismayed. Somehow the whole worth of her life seemed to totter at this moment on the ability to provide a proper Sabbath meal for a guest. And in her worry she hurried out to find Yankel. Perhaps if Gidon took the mule he could still ride to the shochet in Yavniel and come back in time? Or, Feigel was even ready to ask Kramer for the loan of his horse!

  “Who is coming, the Messiah himself?” Yankel gasped. “Whatever we ourselves will eat for the Sabbath, this shomer will eat, and enough!”

  But Gidon had heard, and a few moments after Feigel had returned to the hut she saw him in the yard, stalking one of the chickens. “Gidon, what are you doing?”

  “Have no fear, it will be a true shochet!”

  Dvora, Schmulik, Eliza, even little Avramchick had joined the chase as the terrified birds flapped out of their very hands, squeaking gevald! To these doings Feigel shut her eyes. It was Schmulik who caught one of the young chickens, holding her feet while Dvora tied them. “But Gidon,” she whispered, “where are you taking her?”

  Gidon winked. “To the Yemenites. They have a shochet, don’t they?”

  “But from Yemenites Tateh won’t accept it.”

  “A shochet is a shochet.” He shrugged. “They’re religious, aren’t they? They’re Jews, aren’t they?”

  With a grimace Gidon babbled an abracadabra in imitation of a shochet’s blessing, as he made the motion of slitting the chicken’s throat. Then he imitated the bird’s final flapping, a stagger, a shivery collapse, and little Avramchick laughed, though a bit doubtfully. The Yemenites Gidon had thought of because one of them, a stonecutter, had appeared when the Abulafia the Sephardi had ceased to come. At first glance, the slender dark-skinned worker had seemed an Arab, but there were ringlets before his ears. In any case it turned out that Kramer had got him to labor for Arab wages.

  In an odd nasal Hebrew, the Yemenite had explained to Gidon that he was from the little settlement by the Kinnereth. Indeed Gidon had noticed their poor straw huts at the edge of the lake, made of nothing but reed matting. It was a man of Yavniel who had journeyed down the Red Sea to the land of Yemen a few years before, and brought back a number of these families; they were like Arabs, but they were religious Jews—their tribes had lived there in Yemen since the days of the Queen of Sheba, they said. In this way, before the new wave of chalutzim came, the farmers of Yavniel had thought of bringing themselves a supply of Jewish labor. Diligent workers the Yemenites were known to be, and undemanding; they lived on very little, like the fellaheen. Only, many of them had sickened and died.

  Under a pepper tree the Yemenite shochet squatted, his feet in a little pool of feathers clotted with chicken blood. He had already finished. Behind him in the hut with its straw-mat flooring, his wife was completing the last scrub-up for the Sabbath, and through the open doorway, the place shone with the many-colored covers of the pillows and bolsters on their sleeping mats.

  Gidon held out the chicken. In his singsong Hebrew the shochet asked what the boy wanted. “Slaughter her, what do you think!” And Gidon held out a coin.

  “Your father sent you to me?” the Yemenite asked, turning his own head on its scrawny neck with a birdlike, questioning air.

  “A guest is coming for Shabbat. We didn’t have time to go to Yavniel, so quick, slaughter it.”

  “A guest for Shabbat?” the shochet temporized.

  “My sister’s suitor. It’s a mitzvah.” This was a touch, Gidon knew, that would fetch the man. With the religious, everything connected with a marriage was already a mitzvah.

  The wizened little slaughterer had indeed begun to glow at the word. He hummed a little as he took hold of the fowl and felt it. Aha, a meaty young bird, might the children of the marriage be strong and live long! He began to intone the blessing and the knife moved so swiftly you could hardly tell what happened. The line between life and death was nothing.

  The coin the Yemenite waved off. Let it be with his blessings, he said. “Are we not all descended from Solomon the King? And may the family increase. Good Sabbath.”

  And running all the way back, Gidon presented the bird to his mother. “A real kosher shochet,” he insisted. “He said the same blessing as the shochet in Cherezinka.” And he repeated a few words, almighty this and almighty that, in a Yemenite singsong. Feigel gave a dubious sigh. Who knew—with Gidon, Yankel still got along, so perhaps Yankel would let it pass. Dvoraleh took her brother’s face between her hands and bestowed a kiss on his forehead. Still somewhat worried, Feigel turned the bird this way and that, inspecting it. “The Yemenites aren’t pious enough for you?” Leah cried. Taking hold of the dead chicken, she began to pull off the feathers. “They’re a thousand times more pious even than the Jews of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem!”

  “People say they are half Arabs,” Feigel worried.

  “They are more Jews than we are!”

  “That wouldn’t be so much,” her mother replied tartly. Even while she hesitated on the final decision, Feigel rushed about, filled the large water pot. How small the bird looked, and how many mouths were they? At least Reuven, who had come from their kvutsa for the Sabbath, need not be counted, the vegetarian. She herself, Feigel calculated, need take only half a wing to make a semblance. Meanwhile she instructed Dvora to take a few raisins, a few almonds, some bread crumbs for the stuffing. Ach, how little she had taught her daughters! Nu, what would be would be. If Tateh said no, then the bird could be given to the Yemenites. With them it would be kosher, let them make a feast of it!

  “In this wilderness,” Leah protested, “who is there to peer into your pot to know whether it’s supremely kosher or not? Do you think you are still in Cherezinka?”

  “God can see into the pot,” Gidon quoted, but without levity, as though in all fairness offering his father’s argument. His mother looked at him with a look intended to be scolding, but it failed. “It is enough for your father to know,” she said. “Your father you must respect.”

  * * * *

  The father had ended his labor early and gone down to his waterside mikveh. A Jew in the Holy Land alone with his God, he would recite the words of welcome for the arrival of the Sabbath bride. Then he would walk home as the sun disappeared over the ridge, come home like a Jew from shul, saying “Good Shabbes” as he entered the house.

  The afternoon waned. The aroma of roasting chicken spread over the yard. Surely it could be smelled as far as Sejera itself, Eliza teasingly declared to Dvora, and if her shomer had not really made up his mind whether or not to come on his visit, the aroma would fetch him.

  The afternoon was all but gone, and the suitor had not yet appeared. Dvora tried not to show her worry, but riding from Sejera he might have come by way of the Three Rocks, where many were waylaid.

  No, Leah cried, he’d come straight over the ridge, by the short cut, and besides they wouldn’t dare waylay a shomer!

  Feigel, watching the sun, had another worry. If the young man should come riding after the Sabbath fell, would Yankel even allow him into the house?

  In a moment Yankel would be coming home from his prayers by the river, poor man without a shul to go to. The best would be to explain about the shochet to him even before he reached the house—for surely the aroma would reach him. And the best one to explain would be Dvora herself—no, even better, Eliza. For Eliza he had a special softness.

  Three times Eliza had re-done her braids, ending by tying a broad white bow atop he
r head. The vain one! Her mother always related that the first object she had seized in her baby fingers had been a tiny hand-mirror, and she had never since left off admiring herself. “Go, go, Elizaleh, explain it to Tateh, that with the Yemenites, a shochet does it exactly like the High Priest in King Solomon’s Temple.”

  Eliza walked out across the yard to meet her father. She had put on her white dress with the billowy sleeves, and with the crowning white bow, the slender girl in the twilight haze appeared to Yankel taller, she appeared like a young Sabbath Queen herself, his daughter approaching to meet him. Words from the Song of Songs, still on his lips from the Sabbath prayer, hummed in Yankel’s ears, and in this moment, as he recognized his sweet young Eliza, with the broad curve of the river in the last sunglow behind her, a hand-mirror for her loveliness, his heart stood still. In this moment all was as it should ever be, a perfection reigned in the Above One’s universe, and for this moment he had come here, and brought his Feigel and their children here through such heavy difficulties.

  Eliza twined her arm in his.

  “So? Has the young man come?”

  “No, not yet, Tateh, they are a little worried.”

  Yankel glanced up at the ridge. There was still time for a rider, but not more than a few moments. Still, suppose a Jew were to consider that instead of gazing up from below, he was watching the setting sun from the top of the ridge?

  “Dvora is afraid, if he might have taken the way of the Three Rocks—” Eliza said.

  Just then Yankel caught the scent from the house. “What is your mother cooking, then?” he demanded.

  “Father, you know there is a shochet here!”

  “What? He fell from heaven? Elijah himself, perhaps?”

  “No, Tateh. Right here nearby. A perfectly kosher shochet, and we never knew it.”

  “He has been hiding in a cave?”

  “The Yemenites have a shochet,” Eliza said.

  Yankel stopped in his tracks. “The Yemenites have a shochet. This I understand. For the Yemenites, the Yemenites have a shochet. And so what is that to us?”

  “So—we have chicken for the Sabbath, for Dvora’s shomer.”

  And at this moment, before Yankel could declare himself, the thunder of hooves came to them, and with his keffiyah flying in the wind, Yechezkiel clattered down the hill, streaking to outride the last rays of the setting sun, or indeed as though he were borne upon them. Already the boys were running from the yard to greet him as he reined up, the steed of the guardsmen triumphantly pawing the air.

  “Baruch haba,” Yankel offered nevertheless, as the rider’s boots struck the ground. The boy seemed larger than he had been on the ship, more a man, that much had to be admitted. And glancing at the departing sun with a sternly measuring look, Yankel declared, “You arrived in time. Shabbat shalom.”

  The young man laughed self-consciously. “Our mare can outrace the sun itself!”

  Gidon was already stroking her flank, while she flaired the water-pail he had brought.

  “Careful, don’t let her drink too swiftly,” Yankel admonished.

  “I know.”

  Feigel was standing in the doorway. “Shalom, gveret,” Yechezkiel greeted her respectfully. “I come to pay your family a visit. With your permission.” He included the father.

  “Welcome! The guest is welcome! Come in!”

  —In the old days at home, Yankel was thinking to himself, this was not how it would have happened. First there would have been a go-between to feel out the situation, then discussions of the yiches of the groom—of his lineage, of his scholarly attainments—then friendly bargaining over what the bride might bring on her side of a match—but what did his daughter have to bring in this world? He could provide no dowry for her. And besides, here in the Land it seemed that—aside from the old religious communities—things weren’t done like that any more. Two young people saw each other, took to each other, and the parents would be lucky if the couple even took the trouble to go before a rabbi and stand under a canopy, instead of throwing themselves together on the haystack as no doubt Leah had done, though Feigel and all of them were keeping it a secret from him, and the fellow who had done it with her had vanished…. And this prospective groom, what did he have to show except his horse—and the horse wasn’t his, for that matter—among the members of the Shomer everything was owned in common: the horse belonged to the whole troop of them, even the boy’s boots.

  This Yechezkiel—even from the ship Yankel had felt it—the way the boy liked to preen himself. Look at him with the tassels on his keffiyah. But for that matter they all were like that, dressing up like Cossacks or like Arab sheikhs—that was part of their way.

  Another question—and he could already hear Feigel fretting over it as soon as they would be alone in their bed. How could they allow a younger daughter to become betrothed, even perhaps to be married, while the eldest, Leah, was as yet unwed?

  Still … this was Shabbat, not the time for worrying. And Yankel entered the house, pronouncing the Sabbath peace.

  Feigel had retreated to her pots in the corner; sniffing, though he already knew, Yankel demanded, “What have you cooked here?”

  Schmulik and Yaffaleh were at the other end of the room pretending to know nothing, but their eyes betrayed their complicity. Would the father’s rage burst forth now? Would he allow the chicken to be eaten?

  Yankel went closer and gazed at the fowl lying on its back on Feigel’s largest plate, the head to one side with one eye staring as though in defiance. From one to the other of the family Yankel gazed, as though to settle in his mind which of them had done this thing. Schmulik tensed, ready to rush out the door if the anger should fall his way. But his brother Gidon, he saw, stood quiet without flinching under Tateh’s questioning gaze.

  Now Yankel turned his eyes on his wife. With her lace shawl over her sheitl, and her gown of dark brown silk with its lace insets, she was dressed as though this were already the wedding. The stone hut shone.

  And this doubting moment Feigel seized upon to light the silver candlesticks they had carried from Cherezinka and to say the prayer of the wife. The chaleh lay on the table glistening in the candlelight. Truly his Feigel was a housewife of highest merit, a beryeh, in his heart Yankel admitted it, and yet this could not alter what was kosher and what was tref.

  Having completed the candle-blessing, Feigel turned to him and said calmly, “The bird is kosher. I saw myself. Everything was properly done.”

  Now, with finality, Yankel turned his eyes on Gidon, while his wife continued, “I myself sent him to the shochet. Imagine, how we didn’t think of it until now I don’t know, but among the Yemenites there is a shochet!”

  So with this they had thought to get around him.

  It was the guest himself who saved the moment. Yechezkiel had stepped outside, and from his saddlebag he fetched back a bottle of wine, holding it aloft as he returned, his face shining. Good sweet wine from Zichron Yaacov. “For the Kiddush,” he said, like a decent Jewish boy, and Yankel could not refuse to open the wine and lift his glass as he chanted the blessing. Even the elder children, Reuven and Leah, the unbelievers, to his surprise, joined with an “Omeyn.”

  Somehow Feigel had managed seats for everyone around the big trunk that was covered with the white Sabbath cloth; there was a bench that Gidon had made, and two old chairs had been acquired, and a plank on boxes made a bench on the other side. There they sat, a family with a suitor for a guest! Tearing off the end of the warm chaleh, Yankel spoke the blessing for bread. The chaleh was soft and sweet to the tongue.

  He recited the “eshet chayil,” the “woman of valor” passage of Proverbs to his wife.

  All was good. Feigel served out portions of the gefulte fish, made, as had to be, of two kinds of fish—fish that Schmulik had brought out of the Kinnereth, and with large servings of the fish, she hoped that small portions of the fowl would suffice.

  Perhaps because the girls were all nervous at the presence of the
suitor, they didn’t chatter as much as usual. And suddenly the guest himself became loquacious. Yechezkiel told how worried he had been as to whether the Shomer would accept him. He and his friend Menahem—the little dark one from the boat, surely they remembered?—they had trained themselves together, or rather Menahem had trained him, as this friend knew everything, he had been around the world as a sailor and he had learned to ride as a cowboy in America! So they had gone off together for a whole week with no provender, to live off the land. They had gone to the Huleh swamp.

  “Ah!” Reuven cried. “The Huleh!” Every plant, every bird was said to be found wild there. And Gidon too grew excited. Had they seen herds of water buffalo?

  “Plenty!” cried Yechezkiel. “Even wild boar—” He caught himself up, but Yankel already understood; this would-be son-in-law, to whom the boys were listening as though he were the Maggid of Dubnow himself, was simply another young atheist who would not even have stopped at eating the flesh of the wild pig of the Huleh. Yankel wanted to spit. He was not all that stupid, he told himself, he knew what went on in their world of chalutzim and chalutzoth. His eye fell on Dvora, her face glistening, her lips parted. Would it ever occur to a daughter of his after she was married to keep a kosher house? Why had he troubled so, to bring them here to the Holy Land? What was God’s land to them?

  The suitor was recounting tales now of wondrous fields on the other side, beyond the lakes and swamps of the Huleh, of rich, black earth. One day they would settle there, far up in the north in the foothills of the Hermon, as far as the lands of Dan; they would form their own kvutsa of men of the Shomer, and from their settlement they would send guardsmen all over the yishuv. He was speaking more and more to Reuven and Leah as though they were the heads of the family, and Dvora too looked to her big brother and sister, and not to her father and mother. Feigel brought the fowl to the table.

  —Let them have their chicken, whether it was really kosher or tref only a rabbi could judge, and what did it matter to these godless ones? For himself, Yankel waved aside his portion. This way also there would be more for the guest, surely as big a gobbler as he was a boaster.