Wandering Stars

by Jack Dann (ed)

  “None,” said Moshe Shiloah.

  “Maybe the Kunivaru themselves know a way,” Yakov Ben-Zion suggested.

  “Exactly,” said the rabbi. “My next point. These Kunivaru are a primitive folk. They live closer to the world of magic and witchcraft, of demons and spirits, than we do whose minds are schooled in the habits of reason. Perhaps such cases of possession occur often among them. Perhaps they have techniques for driving out unwanted spirits. Let us turn to them, and let them cure their own.”

  Before long Yigal arrived, bringing with him six Kunivaru, including Gyaymar, the village chief. They wholly filled the little hospital room, bustling around in it like a delegation of huge furry centaurs; I was oppressed by the acrid smell of so many of them in one small space, and although they had always been friendly to us, never raising an objection when we appeared as refugees to settle on their planet, I felt fear of them now as I had never felt before. Clustering about Seul, they asked questions of him in their own supple language, and when Joseph Avneri replied in Hebrew they whispered things to each other unintelligible to us. Then, unexpectedly, the voice of Seul broke through, speaking in halting spastic monosyllables that revealed the terrible shock his nervous system must have received; then the alien faded and Joseph Avneri spoke once more with the Kunivar’s lips, begging forgiveness, asking for release.

  Turning to Gyaymar, Shlomo Feig said, “Have such things happened on this world before?”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” the chief replied. “Many times. When one of us dies having a guilty soul, repose is denied, and the spirit may undergo strange migrations before forgiveness comes. What was the nature of this man’s sin?”

  “It would be difficult to explain to one who is not Jewish,” said the rabbi hastily, glancing away. “The important question is whether you have a means of undoing what has befallen the unfortunate Seul, whose sufferings we all lament.”

  “We have a means, yes,” said Gyaymar the chief.

  The six Kunivaru hoisted Seul to their shoulders and carried him from the kibbutz; we were told that we might accompany them, if we cared to do so. I went along, and Moshe Shiloah, and Shmarya Asch, and Yakov Ben-Zion, and the rabbi, and perhaps some others. The Kunivaru took their comrade not to their village but to a meadow several kilometers to the east, down in the direction of the place where the Hassidim lived. Not long after the Landing the Kunivaru had let us know that the meadow was sacred to them, and none of us had ever entered it.

  It was a lovely place, green and moist, a gently sloping basin crisscrossed by a dozen cool little streams. Depositing Seul beside one of the streams, the Kunivaru went off into the woods bordering the meadow to gather firewood and herbs. We remained close by Seul. “This will do no good,” Joseph Avneri muttered more than once. “A waste of time, a foolish expense of energy.” Three of the Kunivaru started to build a bonfire. Two sat nearby, shredding the herbs, making heaps of leaves, stems, roots. Gradually more of their kind appeared, until the meadow was filled with them; it seemed that the whole village, some four hundred Kunivaru, was turning out to watch or to participate in the rite. Many of them carried musical instruments, trumpets and drums, rattles and clappers, lyres, lutes, small harps, percussive boards, wooden flutes, everything intricate and fanciful of design; we had not suspected such cultural complexity. The priests—I assume they were priests, Kunivaru of stature and dignity—wore ornate ceremonial helmets and heavy golden mantles of sea-beast fur. The ordinary townsfolk carried ribbons and streamers, bits of bright fabric, polished mirrors of stone, and other ornamental devices. When he saw how elaborate a function it was going to be, Moshe Shiloah, an amateur anthropologist at heart, ran back to the kibbutz to fetch camera and recorder. He returned, breathless, just as the rite commenced.

  And a glorious rite it was: incense, a grandly blazing bonfire, the pungent fragrance of freshly picked herbs, some heavy-footed quasi-orgiastic dancing, and a choir punching out harsh, sharp-edged arhythmic melodies. Gyaymar and the high priest of the village performed an elegant antiphonal chant, uttering long curling intertwining melismas and sprinkling Seul with a sweet-smelling pink fluid out of a baroquely carved wooden censer. Never have I beheld such stirring pageantry. But Joseph’s gloomy prediction was correct; it was all entirely useless. Two hours of intensive exorcism had no effect. When the ceremony ended—the ultimate punctuation marks were five terrible shouts from the high priest —the dybbuk remained firmly in possession of Seul. “You have not conquered me,” Joseph declared in a bleak tone.

  Gyaymar said, “It seems we have no power to command an Earthborn soul.”

  “What will we do now?” demanded Yakov Ben-Zion of no one in particular. “Our science and their witchcraft both fail.”

  Joseph Avneri pointed toward the east, toward the village of the Hassidim, and murmured something indistinct.

  “No!” cried Rabbi Shlomo Feig, who stood closest to the dybbuk at that moment.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “It was nothing,” the rabbi said. “It was foolishness. The long ceremony has left him fatigued, and his mind wanders. Pay no attention.”

  I moved nearer to my old friend. “Tell me, Joseph.”

  “I said,” the dybbuk replied slowly, “that perhaps we should send for the Baal Shem.”

  “Foolishness!” said Shlomo Feig, and spat.

  “Why this anger?” Shmarya Asch wanted to know. “You, Rabbi Shlomo, you were one of the first to advocate employing Kunivaru sorcerers in this business. You gladly bring in alien witch doctors, rabbi, and grow angry when someone suggests that your fellow Jew be given a chance to drive out the demon? Be consistent, Shlomo!”

  Rabbi Shlomo’s strong face grew mottled with rage. It was strange to see this calm, even-tempered man becoming so excited. “I will have nothing to do with Hassidim!” he exclaimed.

  “I think this is a matter of professional rivalries,” Moshe Shiloah commented.

  The rabbi said, “To give recognition to all that is most superstitious in Judaism, to all that is most irrational and grotesque and outmoded and medieval? No! No!”

  “But dybbuks are irrational and grotesque and outmoded and medieval,” said Joseph Avneri. “Who better to exorcise one than a rabbi whose soul is still rooted in ancient beliefs?”

  “I forbid this!” Shlomo Feig sputtered. “If the Baal Shem is summoned I will—I will—”

  “Rabbi,” Joseph said, shouting now, “this is a matter of my tortured soul against your offended spiritual pride. Give way! Give way! Get me the Baal Shem!”

  “I refuse!”

  “Look!” called Yakov Ben-Zion. The dispute had suddenly become academic. Uninvited, our Hassidic cousins were arriving at the sacred meadow, a long procession of them, eerie prehistoric-looking figures clad in their traditional long black robes, wide-brimmed hats, heavy beards, dangling side-locks, and at the head of the group marched their tzaddik, their holy man, their prophet, their leader, Reb Shmuel the Baal Shem.

  It was certainly never our idea to bring Hassidim with us when we fled out of the smouldering ruins of the Land of Israel. Our intention was to leave Earth and all its sorrows far behind, to start anew on another world where we could at last build an enduring Jewish homeland, free for once of our eternal Gentile enemies and free, also, of the religious fanatics among our own kind whose presence had long been a drain on our vitality. We needed no mystics, no ecstatics, no weepers, no moaners, no leapers, no chanters; we needed only workers, farmers, machinists, engineers, builders. But how could we refuse them a place on the Ark? It was their good fortune to come upon us just as we were making the final preparations for our flight. The nightmare that had darkened our sleep for three centuries had been made real: the Homeland lay in flames, our armies had been shattered out of ambush, Philistines wielding long knives strode through our devastated cities. Our ship was ready to leap to the stars. We were not cowards but simply realists, for it was folly to think we could do battle any longer, and if some fragm
ent of our ancient nation were to survive, it could only survive far from that bitter world Earth. So we were going to go; and here were suppliants asking us for succor, Reb Shmuel and his thirty followers. How could we turn them away, knowing they would certainly perish? They were human beings, they were Jews. For all our misgivings, we let them come on board.

  And then we wandered across the heavens year after year, and then we came to a star that had no name, only a number, and then we found its fourth planet to be sweet and fertile, a happier world than Earth, and we thanked the God in whom we did not believe for the good luck that He had granted us, and we cried out to each other in congratulation, Mazel tov! Mazel tov! Good luck, good luck, good luck! And someone looked in an old book and saw that mazel once had had an astrological connotation, that in the days of the Bible it had meant not only “luck” but a lucky star, and so we named our lucky star Mazel Tov, and we made our landfall on Mazel Tov IV, which was to be the New Israel. Here we found no enemies, no Egyptians, no Assyrians, no Romans, no Cossacks, no Nazis, no Arabs, only the Kunivaru, kindly people of a simple nature, who solemnly studied our pantomimed explanations and replied to us in gestures, saying, Be welcome, there is more land here than we will ever need. And we built our kibbutz.

  But we had no desire to live close to those people of the past, the Hassidim, and they had scant love for us, for they saw us as pagans, godless Jews who were worse than Gentiles, and they went off to build a muddy little village of their own. Sometimes on clear nights we heard their lusty singing, but otherwise there was scarcely any contact between us and them.

  I could understand Rabbi Shlomo’s hostility to the idea of intervention by the Baal Shem. These Hassidim represented the mystic side of Judaism, the dark uncontrollable Dionysiac side, the skeleton in the tribal closet; Shlomo Feig might be amused or charmed by a rite of exorcism performed by furry centaurs, but when Jews took part in the same sort of supernaturalism it was distressing to him. Then, too, there was the ugly fact that the sane, sensible Rabbi Shlomo had virtually no followers at all among the sane, sensible secularized Jews of our kibbutz, whereas Reb Shmuel’s Hassidim looked upon him with awe, regarding him as a miracle-worker, a seer, a saint. Still, Rabbi Shlomo’s understandable jealousies and prejudices aside, Joseph Avneri was right: dybbuks were vapors out of the realm of the fantastic, and the fantastic was the Baal Shem’s kingdom.

  He was an improbably tall, angular figure, almost skeletal, with gaunt cheekbones, a soft, thickly curling beard, and gentle dreamy eyes. I suppose he was about fifty years old, though I would have believed it if they said he was thirty or seventy or ninety. His sense of the dramatic was unfailing; now—it was late afternoon—he took up a position with the setting sun at his back, so that his long shadow engulfed us all, and spread forth his arms, and said, “We have heard reports of a dybbuk among you.”

  “There is no dybbuk!” Rabbi Shlomo retorted fiercely.

  The Baal Shem smiled. “But there is a Kunivar who speaks with an Israeli voice?”

  “There has been an odd transformation, yes,” Rabbi Shlomo conceded. “But in this age, on this planet, no one can take dybbuks seriously.”

  “That is, you cannot take dybbuks seriously,” said the Baal Shem.

  “I do!” cried Joseph Avneri in exasperation. “I! I! I am the dybbuk! I, Joseph Avneri, dead a year ago last Elul, doomed for my sins to inhabit this Kunivar carcass. A Jew, Reb Shmuel, a dead Jew, a pitiful sinful miserable Yid. Who’ll let me out? Who’ll set me free?”

  “There is no dybbuk?” the Baal Shem said amiably.

  “This Kunivar has gone insane,” said Shlomo Feig.

  We coughed and shifted our feet. If anyone had gone insane it was our rabbi, denying in this fashion the phenomenon that he himself had acknowledged as genuine, however reluctantly, only a few hours before. Envy, wounded pride, and stubbornness had unbalanced his judgment. Joseph Avneri, enraged, began to bellow the Aleph Beth Gimel, the Shma Yisroel, anything that might prove his dybbukhood. The Baal Shem waited patiently, arms outspread, saying nothing. Rabbi Shlomo, confronting him, his powerful stocky figure dwarfed by the long-legged Hassid, maintained energetically that there had to be some rational explanation for the metamorphosis of Seul the Kunivar.

  When Shlomo Feig at length fell silent, the Baal Shem said, “There is a dybbuk in this Kunivar. Do you think, Rabbi Shlomo, that dybbuks ceased their wanderings when the shtetls of Poland were destroyed? Nothing is lost in the sight of God, Rabbi. Jews go to the stars; the Torah and the Talmud and the Zohar have gone also to the stars; dybbuks too may be found in these strange worlds. Rabbi, may I bring peace to this troubled spirit and to this weary Kunivar?”

  “Do whatever you want,” Shlomo Feig muttered in disgust, and strode away scowling.

  Reb Shmuel at once commenced the exorcism. He called first for a minyan. Eight of his Hassidim stepped forward. I exchanged a glance with Shmarya Asch, and we shrugged and came forward too, but the Baal Shem, smiling, waved us away and beckoned two more of his followers into the circle. They began to sing; to my everlasting shame I have no idea what the singing was about, for the words were Yiddish of a Galitsianer sort, nearly as alien to me as the Kunivaru tongue. They sang for ten or fifteen minutes; the Hassidim grew more animated, clapping their hands, dancing about their Baal Shem; suddenly Reb Shmuel lowered his arms to his sides, silencing them, and quietly began to recite Hebrew phrases, which after a moment I recognized as those of the 91st Psalm: The Lord is my refuge and my fortress, in him will I trust. The psalm rolled melodiously to its comforting conclusion, its promise of deliverance and salvation. For a long moment all was still. Then in a terrifying voice, not loud but immensely commanding, the Baal Shem ordered the spirit of Joseph Avneri to quit the body of Seul the Kunivar. “Out! Out! In God’s name out, and off to your eternal rest!” One of the Hassidim handed Reb Shmuel a shofar. The Baal Shem put the ram’s horn to his lips and blew a single titanic blast.

  Joseph Avneri whimpered. The Kunivar that housed him took three awkward, toppling steps. “Oy, mama, mama,” Joseph cried. The Kunivar’s head snapped back; his arms shot straight out at his sides; he tumbled clumsily to his four knees. An eon went by. Then Seul rose—smoothly, this time, with natural Kunivaru grace—and went to the Baal Shem, and knelt, and touched the tzaddik’s black robe. So we knew the thing was done.

  Instants later the tension broke. Two of the Kunivaru priests rushed toward the Baal Shem, and then Gyaymar, and then some of the musicians, and then it seemed the whole tribe was pressing close upon him, trying to touch the holy man. The Hassidim, looking worried, murmured their concern, but the Baal Shem, towering over the surging mob, calmly blessed the Kunivaru, stroking the dense fur of their backs. After some minutes of this the Kunivaru set up a rhythmic chant, and it was a while before I realized what they were saying. Moshe Shiloah and Yakov Ben-Zion caught the sense of it about the same time I did, and we began to laugh, and then our laughter died away.

  “What do their words mean?” the Baal Shem called out.

  “They are saying,” I told him, “that they are convinced of the power of your god. They wish to become Jews.”

  For the first time Reb Shmuel’s poise and serenity shattered. His eyes flashed ferociously and he pushed at the crowding Kunivaru, opening an avenue between them. Coming up to me, he snapped, “Such a thing is an absurdity!”

  “Nevertheless, look at them. They worship you, Reb Shmuel.”

  “I refuse their worship.”

  “You worked a miracle. Can you blame them for adoring you and hungering after your faith?”

  “Let them adore,” said the Baal Shem. “But how can they become Jews? It would be a mockery.”

  I shook my head. “What was it you told Rabbi Shlomo? Nothing is lost in the sight of God. There have always been converts to Judaism; we never invite them, but we never turn them away if they’re sincere, eh, Reb Shmuel? Even here in the stars, there is continuity of tradition, and tradition says we ha
rden not our hearts to those who seek the truth of God. These are a good people: let them be received into Israel.”

  “No,” the Baal Shem said. “A Jew must first of all be human.”

  “Show me that in the Torah.”

  “The Torah! You joke with me. A Jew must first of all be human. Were cats allowed to become Jews? Were horses?”

  “These people are neither cats nor horses, Reb Shmuel. They are as human as we are.”

  “No! No!”

  “If there can be a dybbuk on Mazel Tov IV,” I said, “then there can also be Jews with six limbs and green fur.”

  “No. No. No. No!”

  The Baal Shem had had enough of this debate. Shoving aside the clutching hands of the Kunivaru in a most unsaintly way, he gathered his followers and stalked off, a tower of offended dignity, bidding us no farewells.

  But how can true faith be denied? The Hassidim offered no encouragement, so the Kunivaru came to us; they learned Hebrew and we loaned them books, and Rabbi Shlomo gave them religious instruction, and in their own time and in their own way they entered into Judaism. All this was years ago, in the first generation after the Landing. Most of those who lived in those days are dead now—Rabbi Shlomo, Reb Shmuel the Baal Shem, Moshe Shiloah, Shmarya Asch. I was a young man then. I know a good deal more now, and if I am no closer to God than I ever was, perhaps He has grown closer to me. I eat meat and butter at the same meal, and I plough my land on the Sabbath, but those are old habits that have little to do with belief or the absence of belief.

  We are much closer to the Kunivaru, too, than we were in those early days; they no longer seem like alien beings to us, but merely neighbors whose bodies have a different form. The younger ones of our kibbutz are especially drawn to them. The year before last Rabbi Lhaoyir the Kunivar suggested to some of our boys that they come for lessons to the Talmud Torah, the religious school, that he runs in the Kunivaru village; since the death of Shlomo Feig there has been no one in the kibbutz to give such instruction. When Reb Yossele, the son and successor of Reb Shmuel the Baal Shem, heard this, he raised strong objections. If your boys will take instruction, he said, at least send them to us, and not to green monsters. My son Yigal threw him out of the kibbutz. We would rather let our boys learn the Torah from green monsters, Yigal told Reb Yossele, than have them raised to be Hassidim.