Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“But goddamn it, Ilan. This girl…”

“John!” the Jew cried with great force. “You get in there and give her what consolation you can. And don’t meddle in things that don’t concern you.”

“I’m sorry,” Cullinane apologized. He watched as his friend stomped off; then he returned to the waiting woman. “I’ll speak to Dr. Eliav later,” he fumbled.

“He refused to seeing me, eh?” Zipporah asked.

“Yes, and I understand why.”

“No one seeing me,” she said. “Nothing I can do.”

“There’s no way for you to get married in Israel?”

“None. Here we are having only rabbi marriage, and if they refuse…”

“Somewhere I heard that if the rabbis refused, people fly to Cyprus.”

“Who can flying to Cyprus? The money! And if we go Cyprus…our children bastards. When they growing up they not marry neither.”

“I don’t believe it. You honestly mean that there’s no way you…Hell, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“There is no way, Dr. Cullinane.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d get my things together and I’d move in with Yehiam Efrati…now. And if you need help packing, I’ll come along.”

The powerful girl, so hard-working, so robustly attractive, obviously longed for a husband, but she was forced to say, “Unless we married right, what the purpose?”

At lunch Cullinane sought out Eliav, intending to raise hell, but whatever castigations he had in mind were quickly forestalled: “John, please don’t lecture me in this case. Because one of the reasons why I might be taken into the cabinet is to handle just such complexities.”

“Who said complexities? Inanities.”

“As you wish, but this is the law of Israel, and ninety-nine percent of our laws are humane.”

“But this poor girl…marriageable age…”

“I know.”

“Didn’t you sympathize with the brother-in-law’s letter?”

Ilan Eliav took a deep breath, then said slowly, “No, because I’m working to establish that Levi Zederbaum”—Cullinane was impressed by Eliav’s knowledge of the case—“wrote his letter in the way he did so the local Rumanian censors wouldn’t turn him over to the Russian authorities.”

“Suppose you do prove duress?”

“Zipporah can marry.”

“If you fail?”

“She can’t.”

“But, my God…”

“Shut up!” Eliav cried, and in distress he left the tell and stalked back to the dig, but apparently he was ashamed of his rudeness, for later he returned and said, “These are difficult days.” He thrust forward a sheaf of papers. “You think I’m indifferent to Zipporah’s case. Look at these.” And Cullinane studied the documents that Eliav would face if he took the cabinet position: Case One: Trudl Ginzberg is a Gentile German woman from the city of Gretz, along the Rhine. Brought up a Lutheran, she fell in love with Hyman Ginzberg and against her family’s predictions of disaster married him. With the coming of the Nazis she suffered grievous persecution. Inspired by some inexplicable love of humanity she volunteered to sew the Star of David on her own clothes, fought to protect her children from Storm Troopers and was kicked in the right eye. Now partially blind. By heroic efforts she saved her children and for four years hid her husband in a cellar, providing him and her family with food by working in a factory kitchen. After the war, when she could no longer believe in God, she scraped together money which enabled her to bring Hyman Ginzberg and their three children to Israel, where the rabbis proclaimed, “Trudl Ginzberg is a Gentile. Worse, she is an atheist, and we cannot permit her conversion. Therefore, neither she nor her children can be Jews.” No effort on her part, neither her offer to convert nor her willingness to live according to Jewish law, has succeeded in changing the rabbis’ minds. She is not a Jew and her children cannot be Jews, either. Can you propose a solution the rabbis would accept? Case Two: The minute you see Esther Banarjee and Jaacov Jaacov you will know them to be Indian. They come from Cochin and have dark skin, limpid eyes and slim bodies. But they are also Jews. In the fifteenth century their ancestors fled from Spain to Portugal to Syria to Turkey and thence to the coast of India, where they intermarried with dark-skinned natives. In 1957 when Esther and Jaacov emigrated to Israel they were informed by the rabbis that because of some technical difficulty they could not be Jews. Their problem is this; they want to marry but since they are not Jews they cannot do so in Israel. If they were Christians, no trouble. They could marry in one of our Christian churches; but they are not Christians nor do they want to be so. They want to be Jews. In India their ancestors were Jews for more than four hundred years, sharing in the trials and triumphs of our people, but in Israel, because they are unable to provide written records reaching back four generations, they cannot be Jews. What to do? Case Three: Leon Berkes is the son of an orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, He made a lot of money running a string of kosher hotels in the Catskills, and when the state of Israel was proclaimed, felt an inner compulsion to join us, but his business was prospering and required his supervision, so he lingered in America, secretly ashamed of himself and muttering to his friends, “If I had any guts I’d be over there helping the real Jews.” On his sixtieth birthday he abruptly turned his hotels over to his two sons-in-law, “fine Jewish boys,” he called them, and came to Israel to invest four million dollars in the Jewish state. Naturally he decided upon a hotel, in Akko, and as an observant Jew announced that it would be kosher. For nearly forty years he had been operating such places and he respected the ancient dietary laws of the Torah, but when he approached the Israeli rabbinate for a certificate he encountered many original problems. The Talmud stated that one could work on Shabbat only in case of dire need, which included the serving of food; but waiters were forbidden to write out meal checks, for that was not essential. Berkes complained, “It means more work, but if it’s the law, okay.” Then the rabbis warned, “All religious holidays to be strictly observed,” and Berkes assured them that in America he had done so. On holidays he did not allow his hotel band to play music, but the rabbis said, “We think it would be more respectful if you kept your band silent for nine days before the Ninth of Ab.”Berkes said, “It’s terribly expensive, but if that’s Jewish, okay.” Then the rabbis pointed out that the Torah said explicitly, “Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath day,” and Berkes said, “I never have a fire,” but they explained that in recent years this passage had been construed to mean that no electrical switch, which might accidentally throw a spark, could be operated. They demanded that he stop all elevators throughout the hotel from Friday night through Saturday. He said, “People are going to grumble, but if it’s the law, okay.” But when the rabbis insisted that the automatic doors leading from the dining room to the kitchen must also remain inoperative lest the mechanism accidentally produce a spark, Berkes said, “This is too much.” The rabbis warned, “If one door moves, we’ll take back your certificate.” So Berkes said, “You’re making it too complicated to be a Jew,” and returned to America. The question: Can we get this good man back to Israel?

“You’re taking everybody’s problems on your shoulders,” Cullinane said with respect.

“And the most complicated is my own.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember the day we went to the Vodzher Rebbe’s…with Zodman?”