Джеймс Миченер - The Source

He led the three worshipers away from the main street and down a series of steep winding alleys that clustered along the sides of a hill, and sometimes these alleys were so narrow that Zodman could reach out and touch the houses on either side. Occasionally the buildings joined in their second stories and the men walked through tunnels, winding back and forth through the maze of history, until Eliav pushed open a small door that led into a cramped room not more than twenty-five feet square. Along the sides stood stone benches, hundreds of years old, and on them sat a collection of men who seemed even older: they were bearded, rheumy-eyed and stooped; they wore long black coats and caps trimmed with fur; some had prayer shawls of white wool striped with black. But they were primarily conspicuous because long and sometimes beautiful curls dangled beside their ears, and as they sat they prayed, moving their bodies back and forth in a series of compulsive jerks.

They were Hasidic Jews who gathered about the Rebbe of Vodzh, a holy man who had emigrated from the Russian town of Vodzh many years before, bringing with him these old men and others who were now dead. The famous little man sat huddled by himself, wrapped in a prayer shawl, only his piercing blue eyes visible through a white beard and side curls. He was known as the Vodzher Rebbe and this was his synagogue; but even more memorable was his beadle, a tall, cadaverous man with no teeth and a filthy robe with a hem so stiff with dirt that it scraped the floor. He wore cracked shoes that squeaked as he made his way from one routine job to the next, and his fur cap was moth-eaten and bedraggled. As he led Eliav and his three guests to the benches, Eliav whispered, “When he asks you, ‘Cohen or Levi?’ you reply ‘Israel.’” And as soon as the four were seated the pitiful beadle shuffled up to ask, “Cohen or Levi?” and the men replied, “Israel.”

It would not be accurate to say that formal worship started. There were seventeen men in the synagogue that morning, and each conducted his own service, coming together now and then as some special prayer was reached; but even then they recited at seventeen different speeds, so that the result was a mad jangle. During the service the beadle shuffled back and forth, talking, cajoling, suggesting, while two old Jews sat in a corner conducting a business discussion. Two others prayed in loud voices on a line of their own, while the old rebbe, incredibly ancient, Cullinane thought, mumbled prayers that no one else could have heard. “I’ve been in some synagogues, but nothing like this,” Cullinane whispered to Eliav, who said, “Don’t whisper. Speak up.” And Cullinane said above the rumble of voices, “Catholics aren’t supposed to enter other churches,” and Zodman said, “This isn’t a church. It’s a synagogue.”

In the middle of the service the old beadle went to the niche where the Torah was kept—those first five books of the Bible ascribed to Moses—and as the silver-tasseled scroll was brought forth, old men kissed it reverently. The beadle carried it to a kind of pulpit where a reader began chanting the holy words. No one listened, except that from time to time the beadle summoned different members of the congregation to stand beside the chanter, honorary readers as it were. “He takes first a Cohen, then a Levi, then an Israel,” Eliav said above the noise. “What’re they?” Cullinane asked. “I’ll explain later,” he replied.

And then the beadle was at Cullinane’s elbow, tugging at Paul Zodman’s sleeve, and it was apparent that the Chicagoan was being asked to assist at the reading of the Torah, and suddenly the whole significance of the day was altered. Tears came into the millionaire’s eyes. He looked in bewilderment at Cullinane and Eliav, who pushed him forward. He went to the rickety pulpit, where the reader, using a silver wand, pointed out the words on the scroll, and over the man’s shoulder Zodman looked at the ancient Hebrew characters. Recollections of his grandfather reciting these words came to him, recollections of the little German town of Gretz, from which he had sprung. The drone of voices in the Vodzher synagogue was like an orchestration of his ancestral memories, and when, at the end of the reading, the beadle asked in Yiddish how much Zodman would contribute to the synagogue, the latter said in a low voice, “Two hundred dollars.”

“Six hundred lira!” the beadle shouted to the worshipers, and all stopped to look at Zodman, even the rebbe himself, and the American returned to his seat, sitting very quietly throughout the rest of the service.

Cullinane, used to the rigid formalism of Catholic worship, with its masterful alternation of priestly chant and group participation, was unable to assess the Jewish ritual. Here there was no organization, no systematic division and no apparent beauty. The voices of women were absent. The beadle shuffled up and down, the old rebbe prayed on his own, and each man was his separate synagogue. He looked at the two men in the corner, still arguing their business problem, and he concluded that while Judaism might be meaningful for Paul Zodman it could never substitute for the controlled beauty of Catholicism.

Then just as he was dismissing the religion, a moment arrived that he would never forget, one of the supreme religious experiences of his life. In later years, as he dug through the layers of Jewish history at Makor, it would return at unexpected times to illuminate his understanding. It started simply. The beadle shuffled up to an old man sitting beside Zodman and indicated that he must take off his shoes. The old Jew did so and the beadle banged his way to a little closet under the niche, and while the others prayed he rattled a chain of keys, finally selecting one that unlocked the closet doors, behind which hung a copper pot. This he handed to the man, who went to a spigot outside the door as the beadle threw down a narrow rug. Three other men took off their shoes, and when the first returned with water, washed their hands. Four white prayer shawls were then procured and these the four shoeless men threw over their heads—not their shoulders, their heads—and took their places on the rug, where they prayed in silence, facing the wall.

Now the Vodzher Rebbe began a different kind of chant, composed of short phrases, whereupon the four beshrouded Jews turned to face the congregation and, bowing from the waist, extended their arms to form a kind of cloth tent which hid their faces but allowed their voices to sound forth, and from this strange position they uttered a series of moving cries, meaningless but profound. Cullinane stared at the ghostly figures—these headless Jews lost in their shrouds—and wondered what their performance could signify. It was archaic, passionate, a group of voices shouting some message from the most ancient history of man, and finally the shawls were dropped back over the heads and the voices ceased. The ceremony, whatever it was, had ended, and seventeen different men moaned and grumbled and argued their way to the conclusion of seventeen different services. The rebbe mumbled a prayer and the synagogue service ended.

“What was it?” Cullinane asked, deeply shaken by the last segment of the service.

“The shawl thing?” Eliav asked. “All Jews are divided among Cohens, Levis and Israels. Cohens are priests, Levis are the temple attendants and Israels are the majority that’s left over. At each Saturday service the Cohens in attendance—they don’t have to be named Cohen, though many are—rise, put on their shawls and bless the congregation.”

“Zodman looks as if he has taken it seriously.”

“So do you,” Eliav said.

Zodman left the Vodzher synagogue in a state of euphoria, relieved to know that Israel had some persons, at least, who sustained Jewish ritual—and when the men returned to the cars where Vered waited, he stunned them by stating solemnly, “I don’t think it’s right to drive on Shabbat,” and he would not allow the cars to move until the holy day ended.