Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“I think we should go,” Rabbi Eliezer said.

“You’re agitated by the dirty business of the Sow,” Isaac Gottes Mann argued. “They didn’t humiliate you, Eliezer.”

“I cannot even remember that I kissed the Sow,” Eliezer honestly replied. “But I do remember the looks of hatred on the German faces. It is fortheir sakes that we should leave.”

“Why do you worry about the Germans?”

“If we cause such hatred in Catholic hearts, then we should go,” Eliezer replied simply.

“Those people today?” Isaac countered. “If they didn’t hate us they’d find somebody else.”

“I no longer want to be the cause of Christians’ committing sin,” Eliezer said, and his wife noticed that in three sentences he had moved the argument upward from German to Catholic to Christian; and when the men argued further, he said firmly, “I will not live with my brother if I cause him to outrage God.” Leah thought: This great, good man, constantly he lifts matters up to where they truly rest.

There was a change in the discussion when Isaac, still hopeful that the Jew would find an honorable place in Germany, argued, “The dominance of the Church over us is limited, Eliezer. Before long Gretz may be a Lutheran city,” and spurred by these words the Jews in the crowded synagogue reopened the speculation begun twenty years earlier at the publication of Luther’s conciliatory letter on the Jews: Was there a possibility that a new kind of Christianity might replace the old?

“We must pray for the triumph of Luther,” one of the hopeful Jews reasoned. “In all parts of Germany he is humiliating the Church, and with his victory our freedom will come.”

A matter of real hope had been raised, a breath of fresh air sweeping down the centuries of persecution and entering even the crushed houses of the Gretz Judenstrasse. No Jew dared openly say that he prayed for the downfall of his ancient oppressor, for the Church had proved remorseless in its punishment of renegades, but it was agreed against Rabbi Eliezer’s advice to wait a little longer; and that night when the congregation had departed, even Leah whispered, “We should not go to Turkey, husband. Our children are happy here and we have a good life.” But Eliezer knew that she was not right. No life that involved the hatreds he had seen that day, even though no man had been killed or no house burned, could possibly be termed good.

“Leah,” he said sharply, “it’s proper for you to create the dreams of children and to tell them of open fields, but don’t tell your husband that this rotten life is good.” He pointed at the bedroom in which he stood. “A synagogue of half a room, in which the rabbi sleeps.”

Leah replied, “I am hoping that some day things may be better.”

“The Jews of Germany always hope,” he said harshly, kicking his bed into position.

Leah took him by the hands and asked, “Eliezer, tell me the truth. Why are you determined to leave?”

He thought for a moment, then said, “Because to live as we do in the Judenstrasse is a moral outrage.”

The simple truth stunned Leah and she said quietly, “I shall go with you.”

Cryptically Eliezer added, “We may have to leave very soon. The books of the Jews are being burned, and unless my work is done quickly they may perish.”

Then in 1543 even optimistic Jews like Isaac Gottes Mann learned what the future was to be, for Martin Luther, their one-time champion against the Church, turned on them with a fury that only a sage like Rabbi Eliezer could have predicted. Having tried vainly to convert the stiff-necked Jews to Lutheranism, and having found them as obdurate against Protestants as they had been against Catholics, Luther surrendered all hope for them and lashed out in rantings that came close to monomania or downright idiocy. “Well-poisoners, ritual murderers, spreaders of the plague, practicers of black magic” were some of the milder forms he flung at them. Jewish bankers, he said, stole the life-blood of the community while Jewish doctors poisoned Gentile patients. Synagogues must be destroyed, the Torah burned wherever it could be found, homes torn down brick by brick and Jews sent into the fields to live like Gypsies. “I would threaten to rip their tongues from their throats,” said the prince of Protestantism, “if they do not accept the proof that God is three and not one,” and he urged all God-fearing men to hound the Jews like wild beasts from the land.

It was a shattering blow, the final closing of the door, for these charges would reverberate along the Rhine for centuries, finding voice at last in strange and hideous quarters. So that night Rabbi Eliezer announced to his family, “Tomorrow we start for Turkey.”

“Do you know where it is?” the rebbetzin asked.

“We shall go up the Rhine,” he replied, “cross over into Hungary, and go down the Danube to the capital of the Grand Turk.” And only his wife could visualize the terror and loneliness encompassed in those words.

But Eliezer could not leave Gretz without discharging a final obligation to his community, and to that end he assembled the leaders in his narrow room, saying, “I think you ought to leave Germany now. Those who cannot risk the long journey to Constantinople should move on to Poland, where there is freedom.”

This suggestion was greeted with protest, so he added, “I know how deeply you love Germany and how you hope one day to find peace here. Isaac Gottes Mann has consented to become the leader of those who stay behind, and under him may you find the peace you seek.”

“Reconsider!” Gottes Mann begged his nephew. “This madness will pass and we Jews will know centuries of wonderful accomplishment in this beautiful land, for we are Germans.”

“I feel myself charged with saving the soul of Judaism,” Rabbi Eliezer said, and next morning he was off. But as he led his family for the last time through the iron gate his rebbetzin looked back with longing at the little children who were weeping to see her go, and she uttered the lament of all Jewish mothers who left the ghettos which they had tried to make endurable; “Our little street, what a kingdom of love it was.”

When the family of Bar Zadok approached the border of Germany they were overtaken by a gang of men on horseback who noticed the beauty of the two women, Leah and Elisheba, then nearing eleven, and they began to molest them, so that the rabbi and his son had to defend their womenfolk against the horsemen, who shouted, “Let’s have fun with the Jewesses!” A heavy fight ensued, with the men lashing out at the four Jews and finally knocking Leah to the ground.

When Eliezer saw his wife fall he leaped at one of the assailants, caught him by the leg and tried to pull him from his mount; but the others rode back furiously and their horses trampled the fallen Leah so badly that she died. With anguish greater even than he had ever known, Rabbi Eliezer buried his wife and led his children toward Hungary.

In that country the rabbi’s son fell ill, and there was no money to buy his cure, and he, too, died. But after a long time the tall scholar and his daughter Elisheba came to Safed.

… THE TELL

“Jesus Christ!” Cullinane cried, bursting from sleep and finding himself bolt upright in bed at three in the morning. He was covered with sweat, and the vision he had been having of the two trees remained as clear as the stars shining through his tent.

The first tree he had seen as Major Cullinane, flying his bomber into the Atsugi air base in Japan at the end of World War II. One March morning at an inn where he had taken a charming Japanese girl he had lain in his bed after a session of exquisite love-making and had idly spotted a cherry tree which an early warm breeze had teased into sending forth the first flowers of spring. It had been a different kind of tree from those he had known in America: a huge, gnarled trunk several feet across and apparently dead, except that from it sprang one splendid branch which was vitally alive and about to be covered with flowers.