The Jerusalem inception

by Avraham Azrieli

  His father’s face remained expressionless. “Go on.”

  “A rabbi,” Lemmy said, “might give his followers the wrong advice-not maliciously, but due to ignorance or poor judgment. Not always would it be a minor disagreement about sleeping arrangements. What if it’s a matter of life and death?”

  The silence grew deeper. All eyes focused on him.

  “For example,” Lemmy spoke louder to hide the tremor in his voice, “the rabbis in Europe told their congregations not to immigrate to Palestine, and the millions who obeyed their rabbis died in the Holocaust. And those who disobeyed the rabbis’ rulings and joined the Zionists in Palestine? They survive! I think it proved that rabbis can be wrong. Deadly wrong, even.” He wanted to continue, but the words never left his lips.

  “Master of the Universe!” Rabbi Gerster grabbed the lectern. “Six million were chosen to join God, and you think it was their rabbis’ fault?”

  “It’s not about fault, but about being wrong sometimes-”

  “Silence!” Rabbi Gerster raised both hands. “Who are we to judge God’s decision to gather His lambs under His merciful wings?” He swayed back and forth. “His decision to take my saintly mother, my eight young brothers, and two little sisters. Was my father, Rabbi Yakov Gerster, guilty of their death? And of the death of the rest of our shtetl?”

  After a long moment, Cantor Toiterlich began chanting in a mournful voice: “ This world is only a very narrow bridge, leading to heaven. ”

  More voices joined him. “ And the essence is not to be afraid, not to be afraid at all. ”

  The second time, every man in the synagogue, except Lemmy, chanted the sad melody, eyes shut in devotion, voices growing stronger. “ Not to be afraid, not to be afraid at all. ”

  Lemmy felt Benjamin tugging at his sleeve. He sat down. His throat was dry. No one looked at him.

  T emimah served chicken soup with a slice of bread and a piece of meat with boiled potatoes. The silence was broken only by the clanking of forks and knives. Lemmy had expected his father to admonish him, but not a word was uttered since they had left the synagogue after evening prayers.

  Temimah served tea and cookies.

  Rabbi Gerster recited the blessing after the meal, ending with, “ God shall give courage to His people and bless us with peace. ”

  “Amen,” Temimah said.

  “Father,” Lemmy said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “You didn’t upset me.” His father sighed. “The Nazis, their name be wiped from memory, they upset me.”

  Temimah stood up but did not start to collect the plates.

  “I have doubts,” Lemmy said. “I’m not sure I can accept what you said about obedience. My question about the Holocaust-”

  The word Holocaust brought Rabbi Gerster’s hand pounding the table with such force that the teacups jumped and landed noisily. “You think you’re alone? Everyone has doubts about what happened. Everyone!” He pointed at Lemmy. “You are my son. When you speak, it’s like I’m speaking. You can’t say whatever comes to your mind. You have a responsibility, for God’s sake!”

  “Abraham, please,” Temimah said softly, “he is only-”

  “He’s not a child anymore!” Rabbi Gerster stood. “He can defend himself!”

  “It’s good for him to express his doubts.”

  He glared at her. “To express blasphemy?”

  Temimah lowered her eyes.

  “And you,” the rabbi turned back to Lemmy, “remember who you are! Our people need certainty, not misgivings. They look to us for answers, not for more questions. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not a rabbi,” Lemmy said.

  “Not yet! And if you don’t think before you speak, you’ll never be one!” He left the kitchen, and a moment later, the front door slammed behind him.

  Lemmy collected the plates from the table and placed them in the left sink, which was dedicated for meat dishes. His mother turned on the faucet and soaped the sponge. “For people like us,” she said, “your father and me, the Holocaust is a demon. It’s a terrible monster that’s still haunting us.”

  He knew they had both lost their entire families in the Holocaust. That’s why he didn’t have grandparents, uncles, aunts, or cousins. Temimah had survived a mass execution by pretending to be dead, dug herself out, and was taken in by a Catholic nun who hid her in the basement for four years. After the war and two more years in a displaced persons’ camp in Italy, she had arrived in Israel and found a distant relative in Neturay Karta, where a marriage was arranged with Abraham Gerster.

  “And we’re too small to question God.” She caressed his cheek. “We have to accept His judgment, His decision to collect all those innocent souls to His paradise.” She sighed. “It’s a wonderful thing to know that I’ll meet my parents and siblings again. It makes me so happy to imagine our reunion.”

  Watching his mother’s face, suddenly aglow with inner joy, he held his tongue. How could he argue with her about the meaning of the Nazis’ murder of those she had loved? How could he express doubts, when God’s powers provided his mother with hope?

  “Go now,” Temimah said. “You should be with your father.”

  Lemmy took his coat and hat and went to the synagogue for evening study. Many of the men were back, swaying over open books. Cigarette smoke swirled up to the ceiling. But there was no sign of his father.

  E lie Weiss leaned against the wall by the entrance to the public restroom. The beggar’s cloak was not thick enough to deflect the bitterly cold wind, and he was shivering. Abraham had called for an emergency meeting-the first time ever.

  He appeared out of the darkness in his long black coat and wide-brimmed hat. Elie led the way to his car. The alley was deserted, no children playing outside at this time of night. The dark interior of the car provided privacy against prying eyes. Elie considered turning on the engine for heat but gave up, not wanting to attract attention.

  Abraham did not waste time. “Did you reach Tanya?”

  “She’s a Mossad agent. I can’t just pick up the phone and call her.”

  “Is she in touch with my son?”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “He accompanied her home that Saturday, a couple of months ago. And now he’s talking about things he couldn’t possibly know from studying Talmud all day inside Neturay Karta. It occurred to me that he might be communicating with her, maybe even seeing her in secret.”

  “Unlikely. Why would she waste time on an ultra-Orthodox kid?” Elie rubbed his hands. Abraham must not find out about his son’s relationship with Tanya. “I’ll sniff around my Mossad buddies. Maybe they’ll tell me how to reach her.”

  “Do it!”

  Elie had never seen him so anxious. “Still, a little exposure to the real world will give your son better tools as a leader.”

  “That’s my decision! What if Jerusalem loses his faith in our teachings?”

  “You could always expel him from Neturay Karta. He’s practically an adult.”

  “He’s my son!” Abraham’s heavy hand grasped Elie’s forearm. “And he has a mother too. He’s everything to her. If he continues down this road, it’ll kill Temimah. He’s the focus of all her hopes.”

  “What if she has another child?”

  “No! I can’t even look at children, so similar to our siblings in the shtetl. Every time I see a child, I think of what happened to them.”

  The image appeared in Elie’s mind, the sight from the crack in the attic’s floor, where he and Abraham had hidden above the butcher shop. The Germans had separated the children from the older Jews and herded them into the corral outside. Elie’s father had kept his knives in a wooden rack, sharpened daily to perfection, as Talmud required a shoykhet to slaughter an animal in a single pass of a smooth blade, causing no pain. But the SS men got bored with slicing the children’s throats, so they started stabbing their bellies. Elie could still hear the screams, punctuated by the shooting in the st
reet, where the rest of the Jews were being mowed down in groups of fifty. It had been the first time Abraham’s unique talent emerged. The rabbi’s son had an eerie ability to combine cold thinking with hot-tempered action. Abraham had waited until the four German soldiers were occupied with a girl, who wriggled and fought while they tried to undress her. Abraham slipped down from the attic through the flap door, collected two long knives from the rack, and stabbed the four soldiers in rapid succession. But there was a fifth soldier, who had been out of sight, smoking near the door. By the time Elie followed Abraham down, the German grabbed his machine gun, which was leaning against the wall. Elie managed to swing a knife at the man’s wrist, a passing cut that separated the tendon connecting the muscle that operated his trigger finger. The German’s momentary bewilderment about why his finger wasn’t functioning gave Elie a chance to swing the blade a second time, separating his vocal cords and windpipe. Before the Germans upfront noticed that something was amiss, the two of them slipped through the rear of the shop into the forest. And for months after that, through hunger, danger and more killings, Abraham had continued to bemoan their failure to save even one of the children.

  “And tell Tanya I want to see her again.”

  “You’re the leader of Neturay Karta.” Elie tapped the steering wheel. “Wasn’t her first visit risky enough?”

  “We’ll meet in secret, just like you and I meet.”

  “You can’t revive the past, you know?”

  “That’s not your business!”

  “You are my agent, and therefore you are my business.” Elie pulled a cigarette from a pack. “That son of yours won’t be ready to lead Neturay Karta for another ten, fifteen years, if ever. There’s no retirement from your job. You knew it from day one.”

  “I gave twenty years!” Abraham put a finger in Elie’s face. “Find Tanya and tell her that I’ll be free in one or two years. Do it!”

  Elie lit the cigarette, keeping the match burning so that he could watch Abraham’s reaction. “It’s not so simple. She has feelings for others.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Elie drew long on the cigarette. “Could I speak any clearer? Tanya has a reputation in the spy world. She’s a very passionate woman. Highly sensual. Surely you remember?”

  Abraham leaned closer, his wide shoulders filling the tight space in the car. The flame of the match danced in his eyes, and his bushy beard trembled as his lips pressed together. His left hand rose and rested on Elie’s neck, almost encircling it. The hand tightened, four fingers at the nape, a large thumb pressing the windpipe.

  Elie dropped the match, and the cigarette fell from his lips. He tried to undo Abraham’s grip, realizing he had underestimated the intensity of Abraham’s love for the woman he had thought dead for two decades. Reaching down, Elie’s hand fumbled with the beggar’s cloak, trying to reach the long shoykhet blade that was strapped to his lower leg.

  The world fogged up.

  His hand found the handle of the knife and tried to pull it from its sheath, but the folds of the cloak entangled it.

  “One day,” Abraham said, releasing his grip, “you’ll push it too far.”

  His breath shrieking through his constricted airways, Elie watched through the windshield as Abraham walked away, his black coat and hat melting into the dark of the night.

  Chapter 16

  Later that night, when Lemmy returned from the synagogue, the door to his father’s study was still open, the lights off. His mother was working in the kitchen. She asked, “Where’s your father?”

  “He wasn’t in the synagogue.”

  She wiped her hands on her stained apron. “He likes to be alone when he’s upset. Next time you should ask him whatever you want, but do it in private.”

  Lemmy thought of his father’s expression. “He’s angry because I questioned the authority of rabbis. It’s like I told them not to obey him.”

  “Your father cares nothing for personal glory.” Temimah smiled sadly. “Sometime I wish he did. But he carries too much guilt for having survived while everyone else died.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I feel the same way. But your father can’t afford to indulge in weakness. As a leader he must project strength. It has taken me years to understand, to accept some of his decisions. I must serve him without a question. It’s my duty as a Jewish wife. And you must fulfill your duty, as well.”

  “To get married?”

  Temimah sighed. “You think it’s easy for me? But he is my husband. He is a tzadik, more righteous than all of Neturay Karta put together. We must trust his judgment.” She fixed the collar of his shirt. Smell of dish soap came from her hands. “Good night, Jerusalem.”

  “Good night, Mother.”

  L ocked in his room, Lemmy read Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, the story of a young boy with black hair and dark skin, who wandered around Europe during World War II, chased by primitive villagers and German soldiers. The boy told his own story, and Lemmy imagined he was hearing the boy’s voice as he chronicled his torments.

  Long past midnight, the pages became hazy. Lemmy closed his eyes. Had the rabbis in Europe caused their faithful followers’ deaths? His father’s blue eyes stared at him from the dais, dark with fury, or with terrible pain.

  He turned off the reading light and gazed into the darkness. He wondered where his father had gone after they had argued. It wasn’t safe in Jerusalem at night, especially near the border, where occasional Arab infiltrators from Jordan murdered Jews and slipped back across the border before getting caught. He had no desire to venture out from under the blanket, but he knew the pressure in his bladder would interfere with his sleep.

  Walking down the dark hallway, his bare feet absorbed the coldness of the tiled floor, and he thought how long it would take to warm up again. He reached the foyer and found the door to his father’s study open. Light from a street lamp outside came through the window onto his father’s empty cot. Something must have happened to him!

  Lemmy hurried to wake his mother up. Together they would go to a neighbor who owned the grocery store, which had the only telephone in Meah Shearim, and call the police. The thought of his father injured-or worse! — terrified Lemmy.

  The sound of a sigh made him pause outside his mother’s bedroom. Through the closed door, he heard it again. Was she crying? Had he upset her with his questions and doubts? He turned the knob and nudged the door.

  A section of the wall came into view, then the headboard of his mother’s bed, illuminated through the window by the same street lamp that shed light into his father’s study.

  Another sigh.

  The door opened further. Lemmy saw his mother.

  Temimah was on her back, her head slightly up, her shaved scalp shining with sweat. She sighed again, her face almost happy. Her hands reached back over her head, pressed to the headboard. Her left knee was bent to the side, the white kneecap pointing at Lemmy. Her nightgown was pulled up to her waist.

  The bed shook.

  The door opened all the way, revealing his father, who crouched over her, holding her thighs apart, thrusting into her again and again-a slow slide backward, another thrust, a slide backward, a thrust. His mother’s sighs were hushed yet throaty. Her face twisted with each thrust in pained pleasure, her eyes locked on her husband’s face. The thrusts came faster, his father staring at the wall over the headboard, his beard trembling. Suddenly, he paused and pulled backward, detaching from her, and sat on his ankles. His right hand reached into his groin and started shaking rapidly.

  Startled, she looked up at her husband and groaned.

  The light drew the lines of her full breasts, heaving under the nightgown, the valley between her thighs suddenly vacant. She sat up and grabbed onto his shoulders, trying to bring him down onto her, trying to embrace his hips with her thighs. She moved up and down, grinding against him. She attempted to force away his shaking hand, to pin herself onto him, to direct his seed into h
er body. He used his free hand to shove her away, down on the bed. His right hand shook faster and faster until he froze, and his whole body seemed to tense up in a hard, arched way, and he looked up at the ceiling and grunted.

  His right hand still capped his groin as he stepped down from the bed. He stood with his back to the door, unaware of Lemmy’s presence, and looked down at Temimah. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  She was lying on her back, her lower body naked, her legs open. She turned to the window and whimpered.

  His back slightly hunched, the rabbi turned, took a step toward the door, and froze.

  Lemmy stood in the doorway.

  His mother was sobbing now, facing the other way.

  His father did not move. They looked at each other for a long moment.

  Lemmy turned, entered the bathroom, and closed the door. He did not turn on the light, but lowered the hinged toilet seat and sat down. The wooden seat was cold, and he shuddered. He rested his elbows on his knees, his chin between his palms. He stared into the dark, absorbing what he had seen, comprehending his father’s refusal to seed his mother. There was only one explanation. God had nothing to do with her infertility, and Lemmy realized that he had grown up without siblings because his father didn’t want more children.

  And then a terrible thought occurred to him: Had his father ever wanted any children?

  Lemmy’s lips trembled. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  Chapter 17

  Friday was a day of study, but Lemmy could not concentrate on the page of Talmud before him. He tried not to gawk at his father, who sat at the front of the synagogue, where men came up to him with questions. Trying in vain to convince himself it had been a nightmare, Lemmy knew the truth: The great rabbi was a liar.

  The evening meal was a big affair, as the whole Toiterlich family was invited for dinner to celebrate the impending engagement. Cantor Toiterlich sat at the opposite end from Rabbi Gerster. His children shared two to a chair, except for Sorkeh, who was placed across from Lemmy. While Mrs. Toiterlich helped Temimah with the food, the cantor filled the room with his rich tenor, chanting the traditional blessing for a new couple: “ Delight and enthuse, the beloved and betrothed, as you took joy in your creation, at Eden, in the beginning. ”