Джеймс Миченер - The Source

But at the rebbe’s court there was contradiction: although he himself relied solely upon the Talmud, he did not deny validity to men who thought they had found alternative routes for the Jews. One day in 1874, when Shmuel was twenty-eight, the rebbe surprised the young timber merchant by observing, “What the poet in Berdichev told you is correct. The day is coming when we Jews of Russia and Poland must combine with the Jews of Eretz Israel to build a new land for ourselves. We shall till the soil and work in cities like other men, and if I were younger I would elect this new life.”

That year Shmuel was further perplexed by the arrival in his father’s home of a bearded, unctuous middle-aged Jew named Lipschitz, who nodded to everyone, kept his mouth in a fixed smile and shook hands limply like a woman. He hiked from village to village through Russia, carrying with him a list of Jews who could be counted upon to give him lodging, and in Vodzh he had thrust himself upon the Kagans. “I am from Tiberias,” he announced. “Tiberias, in Eretz Israel, and I shall be living with you for a few days.” He made himself at home, ate voraciously, and visited all Jewish families, begging funds with which to support the Talmudic scholars of Tiberias.

Shmuel disliked Lipschitz and suspected that he was keeping much of the money for himself, but the man’s mention of Eretz Israel so close upon the rebbe’s comments excited Shmuel’s imagination, so that while the guest fed himself Shmuel asked many questions. Between mouthfuls the visitor explained how the holy town nestled beside the Sea of Galilee, how Arabs dominated the town, how the Turks governed, and how the Jews lived.

“What work do they do?” Shmuel asked.

Astonished, Lipschitz replied, “They study.”

“All of them?”

“Yes,” and he recited the Jewish legend which said that on the day when holy men no longer studied the Talmud in Safad and Tiberias, Judaism would perish. “You give your money in Vodzh so that the Mes siah can be protected in Tiberias,” he explained, but Shmuel thought tha much of what he said was nonsense.

In succeeding months the young timber merchant spent many nights talking with his rebbe, who picked his way like an agile deer through the complexities Shmuel was encountering: “Joining a revolution I could not approve, for when the new Russia comes, you and I will still be Jews and our position will not have been improved. Emigrating to Eretz Israel might be right for you, with your energy, but it would be wrong for most of my court. Holding fast to ancient Jewish custom is still our salvation.” As the big man talked, Shmuel acquired his understanding of what Jewish rectitude meant. There was a right way to perform any act and a wrong way, and honest men clung to the former. Each aspect of business life had its moral tradition, which to ignore meant distress. Human relationships were governed by inherited law, which in the long run proved just. At times the rebbe experienced a mystical apprehension of the future, for in late 1874 he warned Shmuel, “One day our Jews in Poland and Russia will again face the days of Czmielnicki. I’m too old to escape. I’ll stay here and help my court survive whatever strikes. But others should ponder the future and act upon it.”

One warm spring evening in 1875 Shmuel discovered what his rebbe had meant, for in a nearby village a casual group of Russian peasants were sitting at an inn getting happily drunk after the day’s planting, and as the sun set, a sense of moroseness overcame one of the farmers and he observed, with no intention of harm, “Every kopeck I get falls into the hands of some Jew.”

“That’s right,” a second farmer said. “Either we give them to Kagan for rent or to Lieb for vodka.”

The farmers turned as a body to study their Jewish host, and Lieb, recognizing the look, began to put away the glassware. He signaled his son.

“Lieb,” the first farmer shouted, “what do you do with our money?”

“I run this place only for the landlord,” Lieb said apologetically, hiding his employer’s money.

“And Kagan?” the second farmer asked. “What does he do with our money?”

“Like me. Gives it to the landlord.”

The men had to admit that Lieb was right, and the second farmer said, “You Jews are as bad off as we are,” and Lieb breathed easier.

But then the first farmer said idly, as if reflecting upon some critical event in his life, “Jerusalem is lost.”

Like a spark this mournful observation lit up the eyes of the half-drunk peasants. A man who had not spoken repeated, “Jerusalem is lost.”

There was a long moment of hesitation, during which Lieb the innkeeper prayed while the sun went down. The farmers watched it go, waiting. The signal came from a youth, drunker than the others, who uttered the fatal word, that hateful word which once pronounced could never be recalled.

“Hep,” he said quietly, and Lieb turned white with fear.

“Hep,” the first farmer repeated as Lieb looked to see if he could reach the door.

“Hep!” the peasants began to chant, and villagers hearing the ominous word began boarding up their windows. Lieb, with panic on his face, shrank into a corner among the bottles.

“Hep!” the drinkers repeated, and of a sudden the young man leaped from his chair, flung himself upon the bar, sliding down to where he faced the innkeeper. Grabbing a knife from a leg of meat he threw himself upon the white-faced Jew and cut his throat.

“Hep!” roared the growing crowd as it surged toward the Jewish section of the village, bellowing the ancient cry of the pogrom: “Hep!” Hierosolyma est perdita . And somehow the fact that Jerusalem was lost, a distant city which they did not know, became an excuse for murdering Jews. If any people in the world had a right to mourn the loss of that sacred city to Islam it was the Jews, but its surrender was used as a reason for exterminating them.

There were some in the crowd who recognized the irrelevancy of their cry and these substituted another of equal potency: “The Zhid crucified our Lord.” But whichever cry was used, it fed the wild spirit of the pogrom and all united in the culminating wail, “Kill the Zhid.”

The peasants, having destroyed the ghetto of their own village, stormed into the countryside, gathering strength from every farm until they reached Vodzh, where someone screamed, “Let’s get the rent collector!” They rushed to the Kagan home, shouting with approval as a swordsman tore off the head of Shmuel’s father with one blow. They cheered again when the same sword slashed open the belly of the old woman. With axes and hoes the Christians gained revenge for the loss of Jerusalem, hacking to pieces four bearded Hasidim who were trying to reach the rebbe’s court.

The mob then stormed into the court, where they found the big man dancing ecstatically with nine of his steadfast friends. For a moment the peasants hesitated, unprepared for this strange scene of men cleansing their minds for death. But then a young drunk sprang at the rebbe, screaming, “He crucified Jesus, didn’t he?” And so the Vodzher Rebbe was slain, and his beard set on fire, and his body dragged through the streets to a spot where more than sixty children, women and old men were being slaughtered and tossed through the air like sheaves of harvested wheat. Jerusalem was lost, Christ was dead, and somehow the shedding of this Jewish blood consoled the bereaved peasants in their drunken sorrow.

Shmuel Kagan returned to Vodzh in time to bury his parents and his rebbe. That night he determined to quit Russia, for he understood at last that what the rebbe had said was true: “When the new Russia comes, you and I will still be Jews and our position will not have been improved.” A vision of Tiberias, beside its lake, grew strong in his mind and he spent the following days consulting with Jews, numbed by the inexplicable ferocity of their neighbors, and he collected from them funds for the purchase of community farm land at Tiberias. Finally he approached the Vodzher Rebbe’s son, now graduated from the yeshiva, and asked him to lead the exile, but the religious young man refused to leave the village of his ancestors. “I shall stay here and be the rebbe. Last week my father told me that pretty soon you would be going.” So the new rebbe prayed with Kagan and at the end they repeated the litany of all Jews in the Diaspora, “To next year in Jerusalem.”