Avraham Azrieli - The Jerusalem inception

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 it 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.”

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.”