Джеймс Миченер - The Source

That father bought

For two zuzim.”

Neither Elijah nor Gottesmann came through the door that night, so the three waiting Jews sat at the table through the long hours and inaugurated that probing dialogue between the blue-eyed rebbe and the suntanned sabra which was to continue through the eight days of Passover and into the beginning of May, days when it seemed as if the compressing Arabs must crush the Jews at last, days during which only an extraordinary heroism kept the Jewish quarter of the old town viable. That the Jews of Safad resisted was a miracle, truly it could be called only that, for from all vantage points the Arabs poured down a steady rifle fire, picking off any Jew who moved unwarily. Yet somehow the stiff-necked Jews hung on, outnumbered, outgunned, outmaneuvered; and during this heroic defense of an area that could not possibly be held, but which all were determined to hold, Ilana and Rebbe Itzik talked.

REBBE in Yiddish: Do you really believe that against God’s expressed will you can establish a state of Israel in the Holy Land?

SABRA in Hebrew; Yes. Men like my husband …

REBBE in Yiddish: How do you dare to call him your husband? You’re not married.

SABRA in Hebrew: I call him my husband because my father summoned two neighbors, and in their presence announced, “My daughter is married. Have lots of children.” Isn’t that the way Jews were married on this land four thousand years ago? Were there rabbis then?

REBBE: Years pass and people grow wiser. Through many centuries the Jews found it best that their daughters marry in a certain way. Formally. With community sanction. You’re not strong enough to live by your own laws. But you will be strong if you follow our sacred traditions. If you marry your tall Ashkenazi legally. As wise persons do.

SABRA: You keep speaking of traditions. It’s I who am going back to the great traditions of this land. To the traditions of the patriarchs … Moses … Aaron … Jacob, men who lived in freedom. It’s you who want to ignore those traditions and substitute ugly little tricks picked up in Poland and Russia, where Jews lived like pigs.

REBBE: YOU may not respect countries like Poland and Russia, but for two thousand years the Jews of the world have been forced to live in such countries. What happened to them there has determined their history, their character. Would you erase Maimonides, who lived in Egypt? And Baal Shem Tov, who lived in Poland? And the Vilna Gaon, who lived in Lithuania?

SABRA: Yes. We’re going to build a new state here, not a pale copy of something that was pitiful even when it existed in Poland and Lithuania. We want new laws, new customs, new everything. And we insist that this newness be based upon the Jews as they were in ancient times. On this land.

REBBE: But what existed then has meaning only in terms of what took place in the intervening years. Of all the Jews who have ever lived in the world, nine out of ten never saw Israel. Are you going to pick your tradition only from the one-tenth who happened to live here?

SABRA: Yes. If the nine-tenths got so badly off the track we’d better forget their errors.

REBBE: And you’re willing to throw over all the wisdom accumulated in the Talmud?

SABRA: Yes. You rabbis have made of the Talmud a prison of the spirit, and if we have to surrender what goodness there is in the Talmud to break out of that prison, we’ll do so. Then go back to pick up what’s good and necessary.

REBBE: Do you believe that one generation of Jews will have sufficient wisdom and moral insight to rebuild what it took our greatest minds, Akiba, Maimonides, two thousand years to construct?

SABRA: These are radical times. If we choose wisely we can rebuild.

REBBE: Don’t you respect the Talmud?

SABRA: NO. When my grandfather came to Tiberias nearly seventy years ago he was stripped naked and beaten by the Talmud scholars in that town. They said his idea to put Jews on the land was folly. When he brought over a settlement from Russia the Jews took one look at the land he had selected and they all wanted to run in behind the walls of Tiberias and study Talmud. They had escaped one Talmudic ghetto but sought refuge in another. Anything that does that to a people is wrong.

REBBE: Have you forgotten what Maimonides said about Jews as they built a nation? “Attach your nation to a true thing which shall not alter or be destroyed, and raise your voices in a faith that shall never fail. In this covenant stay, in this religion hold fast, in this your faith remain.” Is there a better counsel?

SABRA: No. But you have said that you’re against the state, so why worry about its form?

REBBE: I am always concerned about what Jews do.

SABRA: SO if we have a state, you want it to be as old-fashioned as possible?

REBBE: I want all Jews to live within the fence of the Talmud. Have you forgotten what the great Rabbi Akiba said? The fish were having a difficult time with the nets in the stream and the fox called, “Leave the dangerous water. Come up on land,” and the fish were about to do so when their leader asked, “If we are having a difficult time in the water, which is our element, how much more dangerous will be the land, where the fox waits to eat us?” If Jews have difficulty within the Talmud, which is their element, how much worse will they be without it?

SABRA: My real complaint against the Talmud is my father’s … and my grandfather’s. That rabbis with narrow consciences interpret it. The Torah says simply, “The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work …” That’s straightforward. But the rabbis write whole books about what a man shall not do on Shabbat, and when Safad is about to fall to the Arabs you bring out those books to halt sensible work. If we win an Israel for you, do you expect to enforce each detail of those many books?

REBBE: Whether I leave Safad alive or not is God’s will. If we die, we shall die as we have died in the past. But if I am to be saved, I shall insist that Israel observe every law that God gave us.

SABRA: As interpreted by you?

REBBE: YOU frighten me when you rely so arrogantly upon your personal judgment as to what will be good for the state you plan.

SABRA: Not my judgment. The judgment of all who bring the state into being.

REBBE: Don’t you know what has happened to Jews when they relied upon their own illumination? When they by-passed the Talmud? Up this street used to live one of the most alluring Jews of history, Dr. Abulafia. Assisted by others of similar power he developed a mystical insight into the nature of God. An insight which he made available to every man. Each man his own rabbi. God talking personally to each man as he talked to Moses our Teacher. Perhaps new commandments to be delivered direct from God without the searching analysis and intervention of the rabbis.

SABRA: Would you as a rabbi veto what God himself has spoken?

REBBE: Of course. God tells us what is good for the world and the rabbis study his word to determine what is good for man.

SABRA: Then if our state has an elected parliament like England, or a congress like the United States, you would be willing for a group of rabbis to review their laws and say what should be obeyed and what should not?

REBBE: Of course. Someone must do it, and this is what rabbis are trained to do. Because in the days following Dr. Abulafia, when each man was his own rabbi, who came upon us offering his credentials and crying that he was the Messiah but Shabbetai Zevi? A Turkish Jew from Smyrna. Given to fits of exhilaration and depression. And his movement swept through the Jews of Europe, so that men in Vodzh were convinced that in 1665 the world would enter paradise in compensation for the Czmielnicki massacres of the decades before. Those were exciting days, wonderful for Jews … and then you know what happened? Shabbetai Zevi, the savior of the Jewish people, was captured in Constantinople and before even one torture was applied he converted to Islam. Our great savior had the courage of a mouse, and the damage he did to Jews of the world cannot be calculated.