Джеймс Миченер - The Source

On his way back to the office he saw with apprehension that the team at Trench A was gouging out the earth with unscientific haste and no doubt destroying minor objects. He protested to Tabari, but the Arab said, “We’ve got ten years to impress scholars, and one morning to impress Paul J. Zodman. If I had a steam shovel right now, I’d use it.” And his scheme proved profitable when a boy from Trench A turned up one of the real finds at the tell:

“What is it?” Zodman asked.

“The most Hebrew thing we’ve found yet,” Cullinane explained. “The kind of horned altar they speak of in the Bible. This could date back to the time of King David. He may even have worshiped at it, although I doubt that he was ever here.” Zodman bent in the dust to study the old stone altar, so strange and barbaric, yet the foundation of so much of Jewish religion, the kind of altar at which the first sacrifices were made to the one god. Tenderly he patted the antique piece, then said, “I’m flying out tonight. To Rome.”

“But you’ve been here only two days!” Cullinane protested.

“Can’t give you any more time,” the busy man said, and on the way to the airport he observed to Vered and Cullinane, “These two days were worth two years of my life. I saw something I’ll never forget.”

“The Vodzher Rebbe?” Vered asked, with just a touch of malice.

“No. An Israeli soldier.” Silence. Deep silence. Then Zodman’s quiet voice: “For two thousand years whenever we Jews saw a soldier, it could only mean bad news. Because the soldier couldn’t be Jewish. He had to be an enemy. It’s no small thing to see a Jewish soldier, standing on his own soil, protecting Jews … not persecuting them.” More silence.

At the airport Zodman assembled his staff and said, “You’re doing a wonderful job. Last night after I talked with Mrs. Bar-El I surrendered my sentimental interest in the castle. Go on down to bedrock. You’re a great team and you can do it.” He hesitated, then pointed at Tabari. “But this one, John, I think you should fire.”

Vered gasped, but Zodman, without changing his austere expression, said, “Lacks the scientific attitude. Doesn’t pay attention to details.”

“His Uncle Mahmoud …” Cullinane stammered.

“Not only did the Orde Wingate Forest have two signs,” Zodman said, “but that first night, while you men were plotting in the tent, I took a walk on the tell and a guard cried, ‘You can’t go there,’ and when I asked why not, he said, ‘Because Mr. Tabari is keeping a piece of Greek statue buried in the sand so that tomorrow he can please some jerk from Chicago.’” And he was gone.

As the plane roared off, its jet engines so reminiscent of the passenger they were bearing aloft, Vered Bar-El sighed, “In Israel there’s bitter discussion about why American Jews refuse to emigrate here. At last I understand. We couldn’t find room for more than one or two like him.”

She looked at Cullinane quizzically, and he said, “America’s a big place. We can absorb all sorts of energy.” And on the long ride back to Makor he again asked Vered why she and Eliav were not married, and she replied cautiously, “Life in Israel’s not altogether simple. Being a Jew is not always easy.” On that subject she obviously preferred to say no more.

Cullinane remarked, “You didn’t see the Vodzher Rebbe and his team, but you can imagine.”

“I used to know the rebbe,” she said cryptically. “Side curls, fur hat, long cloak, frenzy, frenzy. That’s part of the burden we carry.”

“Why do Jews make things so difficult for themselves … and others?” Cullinane asked. “What I mean is this. We Catholics are holding ecumenical conferences to minimize the archaic structure of our religion, while you Israelis seem to be doing everything to make yours more archaic. What’s the reason?”

“You’re looking at the old Jews in the Vodzher synagogue. Why not look at the young Jews at the kibbutz? They refuse to fool around with archaic forms, but they know the Bible better than any Catholic you’ve ever met. They study it not to find religious forms but to discover the organic bases of Judaism. I think, John, that it’s in our young people we’ll find our answers … not in the old rebbes.”

“I wish I were as sure as you are,” he said.

Then, unexpectedly, he gained a series of rapid insights into kibbutz life and discovered for himself reasons that supported Vered’s belief that the salvation of Israel probably rested in the idealism and dedication generated by the kibbutz. It was a Friday night and he had returned to the dig after participating in the evening service at the synagogue in Akko, and as he sat at his table in the mess hall he saw coming out of the kitchen, working as a waiter, a man whose face he recognized. It was the strong, vital face of a man in his mid-forties. His steel-gray hair was cropped short in the German fashion and he had no left arm, his shirt sleeve having been pinned up tight with a safety pin. He was General Teddy Reich, one of the heroes of Israel’s War of Independence and now a cabinet minister. For two years he had been the Israeli ambassador to the United States and was well known in America, where he had proved himself a witty and successful diplomat.

But more than soldier, diplomat or statesman, Teddy Reich was a member of Kibbutz Makor and from it he derived his strength. He had helped establish this communal settlement and had organized its economy and its rules of living; he owned not a penny’s worth of property in the world, only his share in the kibbutz, and frequently throughout the year he came back from Jerusalem to attend the policy-making Friday-night sessions. Whenever he did so, he worked in the kitchen, with one arm, to show the younger members what he had discovered in the long years when Jews had no homeland: that work, productive work, is the salvation of man, and especially of the Jew.

He brought a platter of meat to the archaeologists’ table and said to Eliav, “Could I see you in the kitchen?” Cullinane noticed that Vered watched Eliav go as if she were an apprehensive mother hen, but when she caught Cullinane observing her she laughed nervously: “They say Teddy Reich’s backing Eliav for some important job.”

“In the government?” the Irishman asked.

“Ben-Gurion considered him one of our brightest young men,” she said, and Cullinane thought: She speaks of him as if he were her neighbor’s boy, unattached to her in any way.

In the kitchen Eliav and Reich spent some hours talking politics while the general washed dishes, but when the kibbutz meeting convened, Reich absented himself and came to the headquarters building seeking Cullinane. “Could we talk for a moment?” the one-armed cabinet member asked. Cullinane was pleased at the opportunity, and Reich said, “Mind if we walk back to the kibbutz? I want you to meet someone.”

And for the first time, in summery moonlight, Cullinane actually visited the kibbutz at which he had been impersonally taking his meals. He saw the buildings which men like Reich had wrenched from the soil, the small homes for nearly fifteen hundred people, the wealth accumulated through years of communal work, the schools, the nurseries, the hospital. To walk past these living buildings occupying land that had lain barren for nearly seven hundred and fifty years was an experience that made the state of Israel come alive, and Cullinane listened attentively as Reich explained the rationale for this move or that, but finally the former general said, “What I really wanted to talk with you about is the possibility of getting my daughter into the University of Chicago.”

“Can be done. If she’s a good student.”

“I think she is. But I want you to judge.”