The Jerusalem inception

by Avraham Azrieli

  “ Oy vey!” Benjamin looked around to see if anyone heard Lemmy. “What’s wrong with you? One minute you’re falling asleep, the next you’re saying crazy things.”

  Lemmy leaned forward, his elbows on the book of Talmud. “I’ve been reading stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Benjamin leaned closer, as if someone could hear him over the surrounding noise. “You’re not reading Kabbalah, are you?”

  His friend’s conclusion was logical. Kabbalah, the secret world of Jewish mysticism, was forbidden to anyone but the most pious rabbis, whose strength of faith qualified them to study it. There was a rumor in Meah Shearim that Rabbi Gerster was one of the few scholars allowed to explore the secrets of Kabbalah.

  Benjamin grabbed Lemmy’s arm and shook it. “Tell me!”

  He could not tell Benjamin the truth. If the burden was so heavy on him, how terrible would it be for Benjamin? “I read at night.”

  “What do you read?”

  The Talmud page began to blur, the print no longer discernible. “The smoke is killing me,” Lemmy said, though he wasn’t sure it was the smoke that brought up his tears.

  A t noon, everybody went out to the foyer and formed a line before a table loaded with sliced bread, jars of jam, and a tall samovar of hot tea. Lemmy and Benjamin took their lunch outside to the sunny forecourt, where the air was crisp and fresh.

  After lunch, the men returned to the synagogue for Rabbi Gerster’s lecture. He mounted the front dais and stood before the wooden ark of the Torah, his back to the men. A blue velvet curtain, embroidered with Torah verses in gold threads, covered the ark. Rabbi Gerster kissed the curtain and turned to the podium. He was wearing his prayer shawl over the black coat, his wide-brimmed black hat contrasting with the blond-gray payos and beard.

  Lemmy glanced at Benjamin, whose face was filled with anticipation. Everyone else was similarly entranced, holding their breath for the surprise opening Rabbi Gerster was certain to deliver.

  The rabbi caressed his beard and rocked slowly over the lectern. “We’re all smart,” he roared, his voice filling the sanctuary. “We’re all wise. We all know Talmud. So why would two scholars yank on a tallis in opposite directions like silly boys fighting over a toy?”

  The synagogue filled with laughter.

  “Master of the Universe! Who would fight over such an object of small value and great spiritual significance? Imagine that I walk home with Cantor Toiterlich, and we find a prayer shawl-”

  “You can have it,” Cantor Toiterlich boomed.

  “No way,” Rabbi Gerster said. “You take it! In good health!”

  Another burst of laughter came from the men, and Rabbi Gerster, whose own tallis was draped around his shoulders, held up one corner, looking at it with feigned astonishment. “Fighting over this? For what? To wear it later, when they repent for fighting a fellow Jew?”

  Nachum Ha’Levi, an elderly man in the first row, raised his hand. “The commentators explain that property lost by its lawful owner becomes the property of the first person to notice and pick it up in a manner which manifests ownership.”

  The rabbi held his arms wide open. “Therefore?”

  “Therefore,” Ha’Levi continued, “if they just stood there and chatted politely, they would acquire nothing. That’s why the example must include them grabbing it at the same time. Without the physical aspect, there’s no claim for ownership.”

  “True,” Rabbi Gerster said, “but the physical confrontation serves another purpose. It shows that an angry dispute must resolve in peace.” He pointed up. “God’s emissary was the learned rabbi, who brought about reconciliation. He’s not explicitly mentioned, but a real scholar reads between the lines!”

  Many in the crowd nodded and made notations with pencils on the margins of the Talmud page. Lemmy wrote on his: Which rabbi? Why wasn’t he mentioned?

  Benjamin read it over his shoulder and whispered, “What do you mean?”

  Rabbi Gerster clapped his big hands. “Any questions?” His blue eyes surveyed the hall, searching for a raised hand or a doubtful expression. There was none. He closed the Talmud volume. “Let us take a break from studying to bring a Jewish baby boy into God’s covenant.”

  In the rear, the doors opened. The foyer was full of women in headdresses. One of them handed a bundle to Redhead Dan, who carried it to the dais.

  S hortly after 4:00 pm, Elie Weiss arrived at the central police compound at the Russian Yard. He found Major Buskilah at his office in the rear of the building.

  “I’ve been expecting you.” Buskilah was an Iraqi Jew, gray-haired with a weathered face and muscular arms. “My superiors ordered me to obey you, but I won’t risk disaster with those black hats. Like all other hoodlums, they will interpret leniency as a weakness.”

  Elie sat down and lit a cigarette. He drew on it several times until the small room filled with smoke. “I sympathize with your frustration.”

  “We should have arrested them all. It was a stupid order!”

  “My orders are always part of an established strategy.”

  “Next time my radio might be inoperative.”

  “You want to face a court-martial?”

  “Better I face a court-martial than the wife and kids of a policeman lost under my command.”

  “There’s going to be a demonstration on Saturday.” Elie handed him a black-and-white photo, showing the face of a man with a beard and payos. “This is the ringleader. Red hair, burly fellow.”

  “I remember him. He threw the first rock.”

  “Beat him up and throw him in solitary confinement for a couple of days. I’ll join him in the cell once he’s softened up.”

  Major Buskilah pocketed the photo. “There’s another one. The rabbi’s son. I’m going to bust his balls.”

  “Little Jerusalem?” Elie was amused by the major’s sudden anger. “What’s he done to you?”

  “That prick kicked me in the nuts!”

  L emmy joined his father on the dais. He set up the instruments on a small folding table, together with a bottle of sweet red wine and a silver goblet. Redhead Dan sat on a large, elevated chair, his sleeping baby on his lap. Lemmy tried to ignore the many eyes that watched his every move.

  Rabbi Gerster released the safety pin on the cloth diaper. He pulled up the tiny feet, removed the diaper, and chanted, “ Every male among you shall be circumcised. Thus shall the covenant remain as an everlasting mark in your flesh. ”

  The hall erupted in a loud, “Amen!”

  Lemmy handed him the pressure gauze.

  The baby suddenly opened his eyes and saw Rabbi Gerster’s bearded face. The toothless gums opened wide, and he screamed.

  The rabbi tied the strip of gauze around the base of the baby’s tiny penis. The fiddling must have stimulated it, because a stream of urine emerged, passing over Rabbi Gerster’s left shoulder. Redhead Dan chuckled nervously, and Lemmy held the blade forward. His father took it and brought it to the baby’s loins.

  Redhead Dan cleared his throat. “ Blessed you be, Master of the Universe, for the sacred mitzvah of bringing my son, Shimon ben Dan, into the covenant. ”

  Lemmy held the baby’s legs apart, Rabbi Gerster sliced off the foreskin with the blade, and blood gushed out of the cut.

  Redhead Dan said, “ Oy! ”

  The baby shrieked.

  Lemmy let go of one of the baby’s legs and received the blade from his father. The rabbi picked up the wine goblet and recited: “ Bless you be, Master of the Universe, creator of the fruit of wine.” He sipped wine and bent down, bringing his lips to the fresh, bleeding wound. Lemmy reached for a fresh bandage.

  The rabbi sucked on the open cut, turned his head, and spat a mouthful of wine and blood on the floor. Lemmy quickly pressed a bandage to the wound while his father swished a mouthful of red wine from the goblet and spat again. He wiped his lips and beard with his handkerchief. Meanwhile Lemmy fixed a clean diaper on the baby, dipped a piece of cotton in wine, and held i
t to the baby’s lips. The screaming stopped.

  The men chanted, “Mazal Tov and Siman Tov — Good Fortune and Good Omen.”

  Rabbi Gerster gulped from the wine, this time swallowing it, and joined the men’s singing. Lemmy cleaned the knife and collected the bloody bandages and the foreskin. Later he would bury it behind the synagogue.

  The men helped the shaken Redhead Dan down from the bimah, and a circle formed around him, dancing and singing, as he carried his son to the foyer, where a cluster of women was waiting with the tearful young mother.

  Lemmy felt his father’s arm on his shoulder. “I think you’re ready,” the rabbi said. “Next time, you’ll conduct the ceremony.”

  Chapter 15

  Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem — a Report on the Banality of Evil, left Lemmy confused and angry. Four years earlier, when the Nazi fugitive had been caught in Argentina and brought to stand trial in Jerusalem, Rabbi Gerster led the men in a special prayer of gratitude for the divine hand that had brought the mastermind of The Final Solution to judgment. But Arendt portrayed Eichmann as a man of average intelligence, mild temper, and clerical efficiency-a family man who happened to find himself at the top of a vast bureaucracy of mass extermination.

  On the next Sabbath afternoon, he shared his frustration with Tanya.

  “But it’s true,” she said. “What in retrospect seems like a monstrous enterprise was nothing but a day job for thousands of Germans. Their culture of obedience had conditioned these men to follow their leader’s orders and do a good day’s work-whether it was to manufacture trucks or to operate gas chambers.”

  “That’s impossible! Any human being could tell the difference!” Lemmy clenched his fist. “Even a child knows that killing innocent people is evil!”

  “But what if the people being killed aren’t human? What if they have been stigmatized for generations as evil, as pests, as the cause for all social and economical problems? What if eliminating them is your national duty, dictated by the state’s top authority?”

  “A man has a mind to question authority.”

  “Do the men of Neturay Karta question Rabbi Abraham Gerster’s authority?”

  This argument shocked him, but before he could become angry, he noticed the hint of a smile on Tanya’s lips and understood she was trying to provoke him. “My father speaks for God. Do you believe in God?”

  “That’s a trick question.” She took his hand. “Come, let’s have cake.”

  They shared a lemon tart she had bought at a kosher bakery near Meah Shearim. It was January 1, 1967-her thirty-ninth birthday.

  When he left, she gave him two thin volumes: Night and Dawn, both by author Elie Wiesel. He read them both that night, and was left agonizing over a quandary that went to the core of his faith: Why had God allowed the Nazis to do this? What was God’s purpose in causing so much suffering?

  O ne afternoon, Rabbi Gerster posed a question from the podium: “Talmud says: Create a rabbi for yourself, and acquire a friend. I’ve always wondered: Why create a rabbi, but acquire a friend?”

  Redhead Dan, sitting somewhere in the middle of the hall, raised his hand. “A friend could be acquired with gifts or favors. But a rabbi’s blessing isn’t for sale.”

  “I disagree,” Cantor Toiterlich declared from the front row. “Talmud wouldn’t direct us to buy friends!”

  Benjamin stood up. “Maybe acquire means that it’s mutual. But the relationship with one’s rabbi is created by one’s submission to a spiritual leader.”

  “Well put, young man!” Rabbi Gerster took a contemplative stroll across the dais, the men’s eyes following him. “But as a rabbi, I’d rather have mutuality. So let me tell you a story.” He leaned on the lectern, looking around the hall. “A few years ago, a man named Aaron traveled a whole day from Haifa to talk to me. Temimah brought us tea, and I inquired of the sights he’d seen along the way, how the country was changing.”

  Everyone knew of the vow he had taken not to leave Jerusalem until the Old City was freed from the Arabs.

  Lemmy whispered in Benjamin’s ear, “Obedience to the rabbi-that’s the answer.”

  Benjamin nodded, but it was clear he wasn’t listening. His eyes were locked on Rabbi Gerster, up on the dais. Everyone’s face wore the same delighted expression. Lemmy imagined himself up at the podium. Could he be like his father, captivate hundreds of brilliant, inquisitive Talmudic scholars? And even if he could, did he want to?

  “Finally,” the rabbi continued, “Aaron told me his problem. He was a God-fearing Jew, who worked hard as a bookkeeper to raise five children with his righteous wife, Miriam. One Friday night, he got out of bed to use the bathroom, and noticed that his wife wasn’t breathing!”

  The men groaned, their bodies leaning forward in suspense.

  “Complete silence on Miriam’s side of the bed!” Rabbi Gerster turned to the ark and made like he was begging for relief of Aaron’s agony. “So, even though it was Sabbath, he turned on the lights and discovered that his wife wasn’t even in bed!”

  An explosion of laughter rocked the hall.

  “Aaron wasn’t laughing! He ran through the house in panic, opening every door, turning on the lights in every room, until he found her asleep on the couch. He woke her up, and she started yelling at him for turning on the lights during Sabbath!”

  He waited for the laughter to calm down.

  “The rest of that night, Aaron couldn’t sleep, because all the lights were on. The following night he still couldn’t sleep, because Miriam refused to return to their bedroom. His snoring interfered with her sleep, she argued, and she could no longer bear children, so why share a bed? Aaron begged, yelled, threatened a divorce, but Miriam was deaf to his pleas. So he took her to their rabbi, who had married them many years before, circumcised their sons, blessed their daughters, and led them through life with his wise advice and knowledge of Talmud.”

  “Ah!” The men sighed in relief.

  Rabbi Gerster clapped his hands. “Guess how the good rabbi from Haifa ruled. For Aaron?”

  A forest of hands appeared.

  “For Miriam?”

  Lemmy looked around. No hand rose in support of the wife. The blood rushed to his face. Talmud didn’t command marital slavery! He knew what Howard Roark would do now!

  He raised his hand.

  No one saw the lonely hand in the rear of the hall, except for his father, who ignored it and announced, “Mazal Tov! You voted wisely!”

  The men applauded.

  “Talmud commands a wife to serve her husband’s bodily needs, notwithstanding her incapability to bear children anymore. It’s part of the marriage. After all, Sarah, the mother of our nation, gave birth to Isaac when she was a hundred years old. It can happen.” Rabbi Gerster looked down and sighed. “It’s all in God’s hands.”

  The silence was charged. Everyone knew of the rabbi’s pain at his wife’s inability to bear him more children.

  “You voted wisely,” he repeated, “but you guessed poorly!”

  The crowd groaned.

  “Their rabbi told Aaron to let her be. Now what do you say to that?”

  The men shook their heads. They all had wives.

  “It’s true,” the rabbi explained, “that a wife must serve her husband. Miriam sinned, but a sinner cannot be forced to repent. That’s the essence of Judaism-a free choice to sin or to repent. It’s between you and God. And that’s what I told Aaron when he came to me for a second opinion.” He caressed his beard. “But then I thought, does Talmud allow a second opinion when you don’t like your rabbi’s ruling?”

  No one responded.

  “ Create. Acquire. Don’t you see it?” Rabbi Gerster looked around the hall. “Friendships you acquire with kindness, generosity, or intellectual interaction. We are friends with our grocer, tailor, and barber, and we are friends with our study companion. Friendships vary by the nature of reciprocal exchanges. We go through life acquiring and losing friends. But a rabbi? �
�

  Lemmy watched the nodding heads spread like a wave of comprehension.

  “Every Jew must create his rabbi by embracing faith and knowledge. It is a permanent bond of trust, spirituality, confidence, and obedience to your rabbi’s authority. Create! Your rabbi will conduct your marriage ceremony, pronounce your food kosher, settle your disputes, educate your children, and marry them to their chosen spouses. The relationship with your rabbi is like the relationship with your child. And let me ask you: When our child behaves disagreeably, do we go out to seek a new and better child? Of course not! Once we create the parental bond, it’s inseparable, for better or for worse. Similarly, the bond of obedience to our rabbi is unbreakable.” Rabbi Gerster paused, looking from one side of the crowded synagogue to the other. “And when I called to check on Aaron a few months later, he told me that Miriam had fallen sick, and he took care of her, which renewed their feelings for each other-better than ever!”

  The men exhaled in relief. A story with a sweet and instructive ending was a perfect appetizer for the warm dinner that awaited each of the men at home, prepared by their loyal wives. The chandelier above the dais, while not lit up, glistened in red reflections of the setting sun, signaling the end of a day of studying.

  But Lemmy could not think about dinner. How could hundreds of Talmudic scholars, critical and inquisitive minds, turn into the submissive crowd surrounding him? How could they not raise their voices in the same protest that boiled inside him?

  As if in a dream, he raised his hand.

  His father noticed. “Yes?”

  The clatter subsided as all heads gradually turned to him.

  “I think that, just like Talmud doesn’t require a wife to obey her husband blindly, Talmud also doesn’t require a husband to obey his rabbi blindly.” Lemmy swallowed hard. “A rabbi is only flesh and blood. A rabbi could be wrong. Anyone could be wrong sometime, right?” He took a deep breath. The hall was silent. “Maybe the meaning of create is that we have a personal choice to seek a rabbi whose rulings we find to be wise?” He shifted his weight, his knees shaky.