Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“What does it mean?” Tabari asked.

“Well, this bold sentence in the middle is an opinion handed down by the great Rabbi Akiba.”

“Who was he?” Tabari asked.

“A rabbi. He’s buried here in Tubariyeh.”

Tabari studied Akiba’s material, then pointed to one of the surrounding blocks of type. “What’s this one?”

“A judgment of Rabbi Meir, who came later. He’s also buried in Tubariyeh.”

“And this big block over there?”

“Greatest of them all. Maimonides of Egypt.” He studied the beautiful, complicated page and said, “Excellency, you’ve chosen a page most appropriate to Tubariyeh, for Maimonides is also buried here.” Then, to his dismay, he realized that Kaimakam Tabari wasn’t taking his discourse on the Talmud seriously, had not even wanted to know what the great Jewish book was about. Tabari had much earthier ideas in mind and in pursuit of them he slammed the big book closed and stared directly at his little guest. “Shmuel, will you have a synagogue in your new settlement?”

“Yes.”

“Well, wouldn’t a set of the Talmud like this … real leather. Wouldn’t that be a great thing to give the new synagogue?”

At first Hacohen thought that Tabari, in gratitude for the baksheesh he would extract from the Jews, was proposing to give the newcomers this expensive gift of books, and the little Jew almost made an ass of himself. He started to express his gratitude, then caught himself: My God! He expects me to buy them.

Tabari, quick to notice changes in the faces of people who came to consult him, caught the incipient smile and underwent the same degree of shock: My God! I do believe the little Jew thought I was giving him the books.

It was Tabari who spoke first. “So I thought that if you had—well—even a little extra money …”

The rest of the things Hacohen said that hot evening he could not later recall, for it was not he but some power greater that spoke through his voice. “Where did you get the Talmud?” he asked coldly.

“There was an old rabbi with some papers that had to be signed … in Beirut.”

“Did he offer you that Talmud? For some papers?”

“They were exceedingly significant papers … involving his whole community.”

“But did he offer you his Talmud?” In some strange way it was now Shmuel Hacohen’s office. It was he who was posing the questions.

“Well … it wouldn’t be exact to say that he offered the books.”

“You asked him what he had of value?”

“I expected him to come with money … gold pieces. When he arrived with only books …”

“You took them?”

“It was a matter of vital significance,” Tabari insisted.

Shmuel could not speak. He opened one of the volumes and studied the title page: Wilno, 1732 . He wondered what dreadful pressure had been put on the old rabbi to make him surrender these volumes. Jews had died for these books, had been burned at the stake, had seen their children and their sisters killed. What had the old man wanted for his people so desperately that he would divorce himself from his own conscience? To the kaimakam he said, quietly, “These are rare books, Excellency.”

“I thought they were.”

“And you’d like to convert them into cash?”

“Of course. I know you said you had no more gold. But a man always keeps a little back.”

Without argument Shmuel Hacohen took from his left pocket the precious coin. Ceremoniously he placed it on the table where the kaimakam could see it. “I don’t know what it’s worth, Excellency, but it’s yours. Maimonides has said, ‘If a man build a synagogue let him build it finer than the house in which he dwells.’ I shall live with rats and lice a little longer. But the synagogue …” He looked at Tabari as if to ask: What kind of man would steal the holy book of another, then try to sell it back for profit?

Shmuel started piling the massive volumes onto his arms, but Tabari, seeing the impracticability of this, summoned his Egyptian servant. Hacohén pushed the man aside and at last balanced the twenty-two volumes on his forearms and left the room. The kaimakam hurried ahead to open his office door for the burdened man, and for a long moment the two stared at each other, the moral gap between them so tremendous that no comprehension could bridge it.

As he walked through the hot night Shmuel kept repeating the words of Moses his Teacher: “And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?”

… THE TELL

For Cullinane the problem of the Jews’ moral right to Israel was simple. It was a question of custodianship. When Herod was king, the Galilee held a population of more than half a million; in Byzantine times, more than a million. But at the end of Arab, Crusader and Turkish rule the same land supported less than sixty thousand, a visible loss of sixteen out of every seventeen persons. From what he could now see about him, Cullinane guessed that in another twenty years of restored Jewish control the rebuilt soil would again maintain its million people.

This was the staggering, incontrovertible fact: the other custodians had allowed the once sweet land to deteriorate, the wells to fall in and the forests to vanish; the Jews had brought the land back to productivity. He could not avoid wondering whether such creative use did not confer a moral right to possess the land, previous negligence having forfeited such right. The more Cullinane asked himself this question, the more he realized that he was basing an entire moral structure on land alone, and this was not logical.

Yet one by one he had to discard alternatives. Israel’s religious claim he dismissed without much consideration. Israelis, as Jews, had no more claim to a free Israel than Quebec’s misguided Frenchmen had a right to a separatist state merely because they happened to be Catholics. “One hell of a lot more goes into the making of a viable state,” Cullinane assured himself, “than religion,” and he said this even though he, as a Catholic, sympathized with his co-religionists in Canada who felt that they were being discriminated against. To establish a state wholly on religious foundations led to historical perplexities like Jinnah’s Pakistan or the problems involving northern Ireland. As an Irishman, Cullinane felt that his ancestral island had a right to be united, but surely not on religious considerations only.

Nor was Israel’s historic claim to the land impressive; to Cullinane it was irrelevant. Once a man started opening the historical-rights barrel of eels, no one could predict where the slippery evidence might run. The Sioux and Chippewa would reoccupy the United States, which might be an improvement but which might also entail difficulties; ninety-nine per cent of Englishmen would have to evacuate; and the composition of France would be completely changed, which might also be a turn for the better but which would probably create as many problems as it solved. History was neither logical nor moral, and whether one liked it or not the passage of years did establish a pragmatic sanction which only egomaniacs like Benito Mussolini or ghostly fools like the wandering dauphins of France tried to revoke.

One by one Cullinane could tick off the lines of reasoning which failed to impress him regarding the Jewish claim to Israel—language, race, hurts endured abroad, the authority of the Bible, the historical injustice of being the only organized people without its own land—all of these made no substantial impression on Cullinane; but when he had dismissed them logically and in order, there remained one towering consideration, and as the first year’s dig approached an ending this problem of moral right returned to perplex him.